The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery (24 page)

“He would have, Aunt Genia.”

It struck Genia most unpleasantly that once again a guest was late in arriving for a meal. The last time that had happened …

Genia refused to think about that last time.

Briskly, she told the other women, “Nikki, I gave Jason my car to drive, and I don’t want to leave Janie out here alone without a car. May I ask a huge favor?”

“Want me to drive you to the B and B?”

“Yes, would you, please?”

“Of course. Let’s go.”

“Thank you so much, Nikki. Janie, would you take the tuna out of the oven, cover it carefully with foil, and set it aside until we get back? Thank you, dear.”

Genia and Nikki left a worried-looking Janie to finish the preparations for the guest who had not arrived.

Having poured some of the melted water out of the water glasses and put in fresh ice, having checked to make sure the phyllo-wrapped tuna was snugly wrapped in foil, there was nothing for Janie to do but sit in the kitchen and wait until they got back. She was just at the point of feeling bored enough to clean the refrigerator when the telephone rang in the kitchen.

Janie hurried to answer it.

“Jason?” she asked breathlessly.

There was a silence, and then a man’s voice said, “No. Is this the home of Eugenia Potter? I meant to call …”

“Oh! Yes, she’s my aunt, but she’s not here now.”

“Are you Janie?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“This is Jed White calling from Boston. Hello, Janie, I’ve heard a lot of nice things about you. I’m a friend of your great-aunt’s. Would you tell her I called?”

“Sure. Hold on while I get some paper.…”

Janie spotted a pen and an upside down legal pad near the coffeepot and reached for it. Turning it over, she grabbed the pen and scribbled at the top of the first page the number the caller gave her. After she hung up, her attention was drawn to a name written on the first line:
RANDY DIXON
.

Before she could read any further, the kitchen phone rang again, and again she eagerly grabbed it.

“Jason?” she demanded again.

“Janie—”

“Aunt Genia! Where are you? What’s going on?”

“I’m at the bed and breakfast, dear.” Her aunt’s voice sounded funny, kind of hushed and upset and urgent. “Janie, I don’t want to frighten you, but I have to tell you something very bad. Mrs. Stewart has been found in her room, badly beaten. It looks as if someone tried to kill her, and probably thought they had succeeded. She’s still alive, but just barely. I don’t know where your brother is, but”—and here her aunt lowered her voice even more—“we need to find him before the police do.”

“Oh, my God,” Janie said, shocked to her core. “They’ll think he did it, won’t they? Oh, Aunt Genia!”

“Janie, listen to me. This is terribly upsetting. And on top of everything else, it scares me to think of you alone out there on the cul-de-sac. Please lock up the house, get in your car, and drive to your mother’s house. Will you do that right now, please?”

“Okay, but what about Jason?” Her voice rose to a hysterical pitch.

“We’ll find him, Janie. You just leave now, please.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming!”

“Good girl. I’ll see you at your mother’s house.”

Her aunt hung up at her end, leaving Janie holding a dial tone. For a moment, she couldn’t move, paralyzed by this awful new information. This was something else the police would try to blame on Jason! As she stood there, her glance fell on the yellow page with the name Randy Dixon at the top of it.

Her eyes took in the rest of the words before her mind did.

When Randy heard from his resentful wife about the change in Stanley’s will, he knew push had finally come to shove
.

Neither of the Dixons was invited to Genia Potter’s dinner party—yet another exclusion with Stanley behind it. But that gave Randy exactly the opportunity he needed to act on his motive. If he knew his father-in-law’s habits as well as he thought he did, he knew where to find the old man alone and vulnerable
.

Janie’s heart was pounding in her chest, and she felt suddenly short of breath. Her mouth dropped open, and her eyes widened as she read.…

Surprise would help
.

There would be no time for Stanley to yell, to raise an alarm, or to fight back, as feeble as his effort would be
.

It was as easy as falling off a log.…

Only it wasn’t Randy Dixon who fell
.

Janie tore off the first page where it was written. She backed toward the kitchen table, holding the accusatory page in fingers that had gone damp and shaky.
Oh, my God!
she thought, in a panic.
Nikki said her father hired a private investigator to find out bad things about her husband! And here, Aunt Genia has actually written down that Randy killed Mr. Parker! But if Aunt Genia knew, why didn’t she tell Nikki? Why doesn’t she tell the police?

Janie thought she knew why: Because Nikki and the police would not believe her! But Janie believed it. Maybe Nikki was in on it! Maybe Nikki had come out here to distract Aunt Genia, while Randy was at the bed and breakfast trying to kill that poor woman! Nikki said that maybe the mystery lady knew some dirt on Randy! That must have been why Mr. Parker had wanted to meet her, and that meant Randy would have wanted to get rid of Mrs. Stewart, too!

“Oh, my God,” Janie screamed, alone in the kitchen.

She was too distraught to question why Nikki Dixon would have needed to distract her aunt Genia while her husband committed a murder, but she did have the thought that Nikki was too nice to have done such a thing. It had to be all Randy’s doing! Poor Nikki, married to a madman! And now all Janie could think of was that her brother had gone to pick up a woman that somebody wanted to kill. And now that woman was almost dead! What if something had happened to Jason, too? What if that’s why Jason hadn’t called? What if he had walked in on the attack, and Randy had taken him hostage?

Jason needs help!

She felt as desperately scared as she was determined. For all the times she had wished she could grow up fast and leave home, at that moment she felt as terrified as a little kid. “I can’t do this by myself!” The police—hah!—they would never believe her. Her mom would just get hysterical. Her dad was way out on the island, and there was no way he could get here in time. Janie wanted adult help, and she wanted it right now! Aunt Genia was a nice lady, but she was too old and she wasn’t strong enough to rescue Jason from Randy Dixon. Janie wanted an adult who was younger and stronger than Aunt Genia, somebody who would believe her when she explained that Jason wasn’t a killer, he was a victim!

And suddenly she knew exactly the person who might help her.

It was somebody who had always been nice to her, somebody who would believe her, too. She remembered writing an address on a dinner party invitation for Aunt Genia, but she flew to the phone book to make sure of it.

“Twenty-two Drury Lane,” she wrote in a margin of the same page of yellow paper that held the accusation against Randy and the phone number of Aunt Genia’s friend from Boston.

Janie ran from the house with the crumpled yellow paper, without a thought except to find her brother. Nobody but she had all the pieces of the puzzle, she thought. Nobody but she knew that her brother was in danger from a terrible man who had already killed two people and tried to kill a third. With fumbling fingers she opened the door of the car she shared with her beloved twin and threw the yellow paper down on the front seat so she could refer to the address again if she needed to.

She got behind the wheel and roared the car into life.

“Please, please, don’t let us be too late.”

When she was nearly there, right on Main Street, a chugging sound interrupted her desperate thoughts, and then the car began to slow. She glanced at the needle on the gas gauge. “Oh, no! Jason, how could you let it get this empty!” She maneuvered it over to the curb, grabbed her backpack from the front seat, and shoved the car keys into it. Her heart hammered in her chest as she jumped out and started running. It wasn’t far now, she could run all the way to where she had to go to get help.

“Please be home,” she prayed to the person she was hurrying to find.

“Oh, please be there, and please help me!”

      25
M
ISSING
I
NGREDIENT

Genia asked Nikki Dixon to drop her off downtown at the gallery where Donna and the twins lived. Both she and Nikki were so upset by what they had witnessed and learned at the Devon Bed and Breakfast that both women were concerned about leaving the other one alone.

“Genia, are you sure you’re all right?”

Nikki leaned across the front seat to look up into the face of her passenger, who stood on the curb in front of the Eden Gallery.

“I’ll be fine. But wouldn’t you like to come in and be with us, Nikki? We’ll make a pot of coffee and keep each other company.”

“Thank you, but I just want to go home and see Randy.”

“Oh, of course.” Genia started to close the car door, but then she opened it and peered in again. “Nikki?”

“Yes?”

“Remember the week before your father died, when he had you over for lunch?”

The young woman looked surprised, but then her eyes misted over. “How did you know about that?”

Genia ignored Nikki’s question and continued with her own.

“If you don’t mind my asking, why did he do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did he have you to lunch that particular week? Did he have something he wanted to tell you?”

“Oh, yes.” Nikki’s lips trembled. “He wanted to tell me he had lung cancer that had metastasized to his bones, Genia. I wasn’t supposed to tell a soul, but I don’t suppose it matters now. And he said he loved me. He said he wanted to make sure I knew. And he didn’t quite apologize for being a jerk about Randy, but he came as close as my father could come, I guess.” A hurt look came into her eyes, behind her glasses. “That’s one reason I was so upset this morning when I found out about the private eye, Genia. Here I thought my father had made some peace in his heart with my husband, and now I learn he was still trying to sabotage us.”

“Do you still have that card with you?”

“Card? Oh, the private investigator’s? I think so.” She squeezed a hand into the right front pocket of her jeans, twisting awkwardly to get into it from her position behind the wheel of her car. But finally she pulled out a white card and held it up to Genia’s view. “Here.”

“May I borrow it?”

“Sure,” Nikki said, and held it out for Genia to take. “Why?”

“I want to ask him a question myself.”

“Genia!”

“Oh, not about Randy, about something else.”

“What?” Nikki asked, looking curious.

“I’ll tell you later. I guess you know that your dad also had Randy to lunch the week before he died?”

“Sure, I know.” Stanley’s daughter shook her head, looking baffled and frustrated. “And that’s another thing. Randy didn’t want to go, and why should he? My dad had been so nasty to him for so long. But my dad actually asked politely, so I made Randy go. And when he came back, you know what he said? He said that Dad behaved pretty well. They didn’t exactly hit it off like best friends, but it was … okay. And he said that all my dad wanted was to tell Randy to take good care of me.” Again, Nikki’s eyes filled with tears. “And all the time that private investigator was trying to dig up dirt on him.”

Genia wanted to say that might not be the case. But until she was sure of it, she didn’t want to claim something that Nikki would not be inclined to believe. Instead, she said good-bye, and hurried into the gallery. The questions for Nikki were important to have answered, but right now she regretted any time taken away from her own family.

“Donna!” Genia called, upon entering the empty gallery.

“I’m here, Aunt Genia,” came her niece’s voice from below the sales desk. Then she popped up from behind it, looking surprised to see her aunt. “What happened to lunch? Aren’t you and Janie supposed to be eating with that woman Jason picked up?”

“Is Jason here, Donna?”

“Yes, he came running in about an hour—oh, no, didn’t he pick her up like he was supposed to? I’ll kill that kid.” She whirled around as if to shout up the stairs, but Genia stopped her.

“Donna, wait!”

She hurried across the gallery to look out of one of the windows in the rear. There was her own rented car, parked in the alley beside Donna’s old van. Genia walked back toward her niece and grabbed hold of her hands. “Donna, something else very bad has happened. The woman I sent Jason to pick up has been found badly beaten, almost dead.…”

Donna’s hands pulled out of Genia’s grasp and she clasped them over her mouth as if to keep herself from screaming. She sagged against the counter, and her aunt grabbed hold of her to keep her from falling.

“Let’s go upstairs and talk to our boy,” Genia said to her.

She assisted Donna upstairs, stroking her hand and telling her what she needed to hear, which was that everything would be all right. Genia had no idea if that was true, but Donna looked as if her knees were about to give out, and she required all the bolstering Genia could give her. At the top of the stairs, they found Jason standing there, pale as a sheet, looking straight at them.

“I didn’t do it,” he said through tightened lips.

He had been listening from up here, Genia guessed.

“What did you see?” she asked him.

“I didn’t see anything! I went to the desk, and I asked for her, and they called her room, and nobody answered. So I waited in the lobby and they called again in a couple of minutes, and they kept ringing her room, and finally I figured she must have gotten a ride out to your house on her own. So I came home.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” Genia asked him.

Jason shrugged, looking like someone who didn’t expect to be believed no matter what he said. “I didn’t think I had to. I mean, if she got her own ride, then obviously you’d know it, and I had a bunch of other stuff to do this morning, so I didn’t even think about it much, I just came on home.”

To Genia, it sounded like normal teenage behavior.

“They’re going to accuse me, aren’t they?”

His mother began to cry and buried her face in her hands.

“I didn’t do anything!” Jason shouted. “I didn’t do any of this stuff they say I did! It’s not fair!” Before they could stop him, he brushed past them and started down the stairs.

“Jason!” his mom and great-aunt called after him.

But he kept running, and then they heard the sound of the back door slam. Genia hurried to a window and looked down. She thought he might get into her car and drive it away, but he didn’t. He got into his mother’s van, instead, and soon was backing out of the drive, straightening the vehicle in the alley, and taking off.

“Where will he go?” she asked his mom.

Donna, who could barely talk for crying, said, “I don’t know. He could go anywhere. Oh, Aunt Genia, this will make him look guilty, won’t it? They’ll think he hurt that poor woman, and now they’ll think he’s running away. Or what if he drives recklessly, what if he gets in an accident?” She moaned and sank down onto the floor of the hallway above the stairs. “I can’t take any more of this.”

Genia wanted to embrace and comfort her.

There wasn’t time to stop for that, however.

She had to settle for bending over and kissing the top of her niece’s head, and patting her shoulders. Then she hurried to a telephone, pulling out of her purse the business card that Nikki Dixon had given her. Quickly, she punched in one of the office numbers printed there.

“Heist Investigations,” a woman’s voice answered.

“May I speak to Mr. Heist, please?”

“Who’s calling?”

“My name is Eugenia Potter. I’m calling in regard to work he did for Mr. Stanley Parker, who is now deceased. It’s urgent that I speak to Mr. Heist.” When he came on the line, she blurted out her name, and then pleaded, “Mr. Heist, I need to know who Stanley Parker hired you to investigate.”

“You willing to pay for this information? That daughter of his hung up on me. I don’t know if she’ll pay his bills now.”

“I’m sure she will, but if she doesn’t, yes, I’ll pay you.”

“All right, then, not that I know if you’re worth it, but what the hell, somebody needs to know this, if Mr. Parker’s not alive to do anything about it now. He hired me to investigate a husband.…”

Genia’s heart sank as she took copious notes.

One of the notes she took was a name: “Stewart.” She underlined it several times. When she hung up, the only question in her mind was
Do I take this to the police, or to Jason’s lawyers?

“Donna, I’m going to the police station,” she announced.

They might be convinced that Jason was their murderer, but the officers she had met had seemed like reasonable people to her. With this testimony from the private investigator in her possession, surely they would have to listen to her.

She left Donna, but only after advising her to get hold of their attorneys and to expect a visit from the Devon police at any moment. Genia couldn’t stop any of them who might be on their way to get Jason, but she could insist on talking to the police chief in the meantime. Maybe if she hurried and went right to the top with her information, she could forestall an actual arrest. Genia rushed to the alley where her car was parked.

Her emergency run to the police chief didn’t go as planned.

On her way to the Devon Police Station, she spotted the twins’ old vehicle parked at an odd angle along the main street. Genia pulled her own car up behind it and hurried out to see what was wrong. Where was Janie? Had the child had a flat tire? Or, worse yet, an accident? Genia pulled on a door handle, discovered it wasn’t locked, and opened it. What she saw inside made her blink in confusion, which rapidly turned to dismay.

On the front seat lay a crumpled piece of yellow paper from a legal pad. Recognizing her own handwriting, Genia picked it up, smoothed it out, and saw the little scenario she had written when she was trying to think how Randy Dixon might have committed Stanley’s murder.

“Oh, no,” Genia murmured. “What have I done?”

She had left the pad on the counter in the kitchen. Upside down. But here was the first page of it.… Then she noticed scribbles in Janie’s handwriting: “Jed White called for Aunt Genia.” She pictured the phone ringing, Janie looking for something on which to write a message, turning the pad over, taking down Jed’s name, then noticing what else was written there.…

What would Janie have thought?

“She’d have thought I was accusing Randy of murder,” Genia said grimly to herself as she stood by the twins’ car. “And she would have remembered that Nikki had just accused Stanley of having Randy investigated. And she would have heard Nikki suggest that maybe Stanley arranged to meet Sylvia Stewart because he thought she had incriminating information about Randy.”

And then Janie had taken Genia’s call from the bed and breakfast, telling her about the attempt on Mrs. Stewart’s life, warning her to leave immediately and go home. But Janie hadn’t made it home, not in all the time that Genia had stayed there. And Genia hadn’t even thought about it. She had been so worried about Jason and so shaken by the events at the hostelry that morning that she hadn’t even realized the other twin had not arrived as she should have by then.

Janie, where are you … why is your car left here?

And then Genia saw something else scribbled in a margin, an address in Devon, one not far from here.

“No,” she said, feeling panicked. “Oh, dear God, no.”

Genia rushed back to her own car, got into it, and raced off to look for her niece in the one place she would have tried to keep her from going. Of all the places Janie could have gone, why this one? If Janie had actually gone to the address on the yellow sheet …

Genia drove faster, hoping to attract police attention.

“Stop me,” she begged the cops. “I don’t have time to drive to you, but if you would only see me run this red light, we could go together.”

No such luck. She broke every traffic law with impunity, as if she had suddenly been elected the mayor of Devon.