A Fatal Twist of Lemon (12 page)

If her murderer was someone at the tea, and I felt pretty certain it was, then he or she had decided to kill her during the tea or as it was breaking up. Someone impulsive, who had a reason for wanting Sylvia dead.

The bells on the front door tinkled as a party of three women in business attire came in. I greeted them warmly, by this point feeling profound gratitude toward every customer who crossed the threshold. I showed them to their seats in Jonquil and informed Dee and Vi of their arrival, then poked my head into the kitchen looking for Nat. She was at the work table talking with Mick and Julio.

“I'm going out for a bit,” I told her. “There's a party of walk-ins, and two reservations at five. You can let the girls handle it if you want.”

“All right, dear,” she said, getting up. “I do have to get ready for dinner. Manny's offered to take us out, given the circumstances. You are still going to join us?”

I stifled a sigh. “Can I take a rain check? Sorry, but I think I'd better make an early night of it. I was up late last night.”

“Of course,” said Nat. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Julio stood up and reached for his jacket on the corner coat rack. “Think I'll go, too, if it's okay. The pâté and the brioche are done. I'll come in early to do the last minute stuff for the opening.”

I suppressed a groan. I still had all the flowers to deal with, not to mention straightening up the mess Detective Aragón and his flunkies had made of my suite. Maybe I wasn't going to make an early night of it after all.

“Thanks, Julio,” I said. “You want a ride to your place? It's still raining pretty hard.”

He glanced toward the window. “If you've got time.”

“Sure. I'll just get my purse.”

I ran upstairs to my suite and grabbed my wool coat and a scarf as well as my purse. I locked the door again, then looked into Kris's office.

“I'm going out. Might not be back by the time you leave. Any important messages?”

She shook her head. “It's been quiet all afternoon.”

“How does tomorrow look?”

She gave a small, rueful smile. “Pretty quiet.”

I tried not to wince. “Cancellations?”

“A couple.”

“Hm. Well, thanks.”

I hurried back downstairs, shrugging into my coat. Julio met me at the back door and we walked along the porch to the back of the kitchen, where I parked my car.

Julio was silent as I drove down the alley to Marcy, then took Washington north toward his apartment.

“Is your roommate coming to the opening tomorrow?” I asked.

“Yeah. He's always up for free food.”

I had given each of the staff one free pass for a friend to attend the grand opening. Now I wished I had given them two each, but it was a bit late for that.

“I thought he was a chef.”

“He is.” Julio glanced sidelong at me and grinned. “We've been having a little competition to see who can come up with the best dessert.”

“Oh. You're not going to surprise me, are you?”

“Don't worry. Nothing that isn't appropriate for the tearoom.”

“Okay,” I said, suppressing a twinge of concern.

Julio was sharing a place with a fellow culinary graduate. I worried that he'd be offered a position he liked better than the tearoom. My hope was that he'd be satisfied with the creative range of our menu, especially the afternoon teas.

We'd even talked about trying a high tea eventually, though with Julio's talent and flair it would be a far cry from the traditional hearty evening meal of a British laborer. Welsh Rarebit, yes, but it would be Welsh Rarebit with a difference.

I pulled into the parking lot for Julio's apartment building. Before getting out of the car he gave me a serious look.

“What did you say to get Tony Aragón all steamed up?”

“I have no idea. One minute we were talking about the media, the next he was screaming at me about my grandmother.”

Julio rubbed a finger down the dashboard in front of him. “See, his folks are pretty poor. I think they lost their house or something. He's always been touchy about rich people.”

“I'm hardly rich—”

“To him you are.”

“I see. Well, thanks, Julio.”

He nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

I watched him into the building, thinking about what he'd said. I didn't consider myself rich—not at all, if you looked at my mortgage. But the fact that I had such a mortgage in the first place was due to my inheritance. The Dusenberry house was not cheap, being both historic and in the midst of old Santa Fe, a short walk from the plaza.

So Detective Aragón was touchy about money. That explained some things.

I drove east on Paseo de Peralta to the historic neighborhood where the Santa Fe Preservation Trust had their offices. Their building, a comfortable, sprawling adobe, had once belonged to a rancher who had served a term as governor of New Mexico.

I parked and hurried through the rain to the shelter of the
portal
, pausing there to look westward across downtown. The sky was darkening, though it was still hours to sunset. A huge storm was blowing up out of the west, promising more rain. A distant rumble of thunder followed up the threat. I went inside, glad to be out of the chill.

Shelly, the pretty brunette receptionist whom I'd met a few times during visits to the Trust, looked up with a smile. “Hi, Ms. Rosings. She's on the phone. Would you like to warm up by the fire until she's free?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

I took off my coat and strolled over to the kiva fireplace, sitting on the cushioned banco beside it. The fire had fallen to coals, and I took a stick of piñon from a rack nearby and propped it against the back of the roughly conical fireplace. After a moment flames began to lick up its sides.

“Thanks,” Shelly said. “Sorry. It's been a little crazy here today.”

“I'm not surprised. I'm so sorry about Mrs. Carruthers.”

Shelly looked at me with wide eyes. “Poor Claudia's been a wreck all day. It must have been awful for you, too!”

“It wasn't the best of days,” I admitted.

“I think she feels extra bad, because … well.” Shelly picked up a stack of papers and began to sort them.

I moved to the chair by her desk. “Because why?” I asked gently.

Shelly glanced toward the closed door behind her which led to a series of rooms, the last of which had been Sylvia's. Claudia's office was next to last, I knew from having passed through it on previous visits. Shelly leaned toward me and lowered her voice.

“They argued yesterday morning, and I don't think they had sorted it out before they went to your tea party.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Poor Claudia! She must feel awful.”

Shelly nodded. “They worked really well together most of the time, but every now and then we'd see fireworks. It's just too bad it had to happen yesterday.”

“Do you know what it was about?”

Shelly shook her head. “All I know is Sylvia won. Please don't mention it to Claudia. She's upset enough.”

“Of course not,” I said, though my curiosity was aroused.

“There, she's off the phone now,” said Shelly. “Go on back, I'll let her know you're here.”

I fetched my coat and opened the door, passing through the conference room and a records room before pausing to knock on Claudia's door. The building was arranged on the old hacienda design, with no hallways. Instead there was a central
plazuela
, like the courtyard at my parents' house on Stagecoach Road. As I glanced out a window at the rain pouring onto the little garden, I felt a pang of homesickness for the old house.

Claudia opened her door and looked out at me. She was wearing a dark brown dress and a dark patterned scarf caught to her shoulder with a silver and turquoise pin. For a second she looked apprehensive, then she gave a stiff smile and waved me toward a chair.

“Sorry I've been hard to reach. Busy day.”

“Mine, too,” I said, draping my coat over the back of the chair.

It was an old-fashioned chair, leather on a blocky wood foundation with lots of big brass studs. The rest of Claudia's office decor was similar. Solid woods, a few well-chosen ornaments like the classic Navajo rug on the wall behind her desk and the polychrome pot on the mantel of her small kiva fireplace. There was no fire burning there. Probably she didn't have time to fuss with it. She was a no-fuss kind of person.

We both sat down, and Claudia put aside some papers and leaned her clasped hands on her desk. “What can I do for you?”

I took a deep breath. “I'm hoping you can—well, give me some peace of mind.”

Claudia frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The police have talked to everyone, but they haven't told me anything of course, and I've been trying to puzzle things out on my own.”

“You mean about Sylvia.”

“Yes. I know you were in the room when I left. Can you tell me who else was there?”

“I left right after you did.”

I didn't remember that. What I did remember was that when I came back from showing Nat and Manny out, Claudia had been in the hall, putting on her gloves. I remembered that clearly, because I'd found it so charming and old-fashioned. Claudia had been the only one who'd worn gloves to the tea.

Gloves, of course, would leave no fingerprints. When Willow had told me about the absence of prints on the necklace I'd thought of Claudia at once. But I knew the lack of prints was due to my moving the necklace.

“I went into the restroom,” Claudia added. “When I left the parlor Sylvia was talking to Kate Hendricks, and Donna was in the room talking to Vince Margolan. When I came out of the restroom I glanced in and saw Sylvia and Donna talking, then I went to get my coat.”

That fit with what Katie had told me. I nodded.

“All right. Thank you.”

“Did the police ask you about me?” Claudia watched me intently.

“No,” I said. “That is, they asked if I knew of any reason why any of the tea guests would want to kill Sylvia. I told them no.”

She seemed to relax a little, and looked down at her clasped hands. “Sylvia and I didn't always get along very easily.”

A tingle went down my arms. I answered with polite interest.

“Oh? I thought you worked together well.”

A small unhappy smile curved Claudia's lips. “As long as I let her have her way, yes. Now and then we differed, and it usually led to harsh words. I'm afraid that happened yesterday.”

“Oh. How unfortunate.”

“Sylvia always thought her own opinions were right. She didn't like being challenged.”

“And you challenged her?”

Claudia sighed, picked up a pen and began to twirl it between her fingers. “Yesterday morning. We disagreed about the acquisition we were to make that afternoon at the title company, after your tea.”

“An acquisition for the Trust?”

“Yes. In your neighborhood, in fact. I thought we were paying far too much money for it, but Sylvia was determined. We had been bidding against another party who wanted the property, you see.”

“Oh.”

She straightened up suddenly. “I'm sorry—would you like some coffee or a soda or something?”

“No, thanks,” I said, waving a hand. “I had a late lunch. So what happened with the property?”

She went back to twiddling with the pen, doodling a little on a notepad by her phone. “The price got so high the Trust couldn't afford to buy it. Sylvia wouldn't let go of it, though. She arranged to put up half the money herself.”

“Goodness! That must have been a lot of money for her to just donate.”

Claudia nodded. “A big chunk of her savings, I believe. She was adamant, though. Kept saying there was no better use for her money than to preserve an endangered historic building. The more I tried to reason with her, the more stubborn she became.”

“I can believe that,” I said. “She does—she did—come on like a steamroller sometimes.”

Claudia laughed. “Yes, she did.”

“Well, maybe you could name the building for her.”

“Oh, we didn't get it.” Claudia dropped the pencil into a rust-colored stoneware mug of other pens and pencils. “We would have had to close yesterday, and without Sylvia's signature we couldn't. The sale fell through.”

“You're not going to pursue it?”

She shrugged. “We can't. Without the money she was going to put into it, we can't possibly afford it.”

I gazed at Claudia, trying to decide if there was a hint of smug satisfaction in her attitude. Perhaps so, but I didn't think winning an argument, even over a large financial transaction, would be enough reason for her to murder a long-time colleague.

“I don't suppose Donna would give you the money her mother intended to donate,” I said slowly.

“I seriously doubt it,” Claudia said. “Donna's never been interested in historic preservation. She's always said it was a waste of time and money. A bit of leftover youthful rebellion, I think. Anyway, it's too late. They've probably sold the building to the other bidder by now.”

“Do you know who the other bidder was?”

She shook her head. “No idea. We were going through our real estate agent, who was dealing with the seller's agent. Sylvia might have known, she was good at ferreting out that kind of information. That's one of the things that made the Trust so successful. She always knew when some historic building was about to come on the market. She loved making preemptive acquisitions.”

“So what happens to the Trust now?” I asked. “Sylvia was the president, wasn't she?”

Claudia nodded. “I'm the V.P. I'll run things until the board decides on a new president.”

“It'll probably be you, won't it?”

“I suppose so.” Claudia looked up at me and flashed a smile, the first real smile she'd shown during the conversation. “Unless they find some other sucker.”