A Fatal Twist of Lemon Read online

  I hadn’t put any in the dining parlor, because there was already an arrangement there. I hadn’t gone into that room at all, so I knew that I hadn’t turned on the chandelier.

  Okay, why? Why would someone keep turning on that light? Just to freak me out, was all I could think of, but I didn’t think any of my staff would try to mess with my head like this.

  Detective Aragón might, but I’d expect him to be more direct. Maybe it was Willow, trying to convince me of Captain Dusenberry’s existence.

  Or maybe it was Captain Dusenberry.

  I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead, wondering if I should call Gina and ask her to come over and take me out for a drink. Clearly the stress and the tension were getting to me.

  I decided on a hot bath instead. Flipping on the hall light, I strode purposefully toward the dining parlor and opened the door.

  It was empty. A single crystal on the chandelier was twisting slowly back and forth. I turned it off, pressing the switch firmly downward as if to keep it from drifting up again, and closed the door.

  Going up the stairs I began to feel nervous again, and just to ease my mind I looked into Kris’s office and then my own. There was a small stack of message slips on my desk, and I glanced through them to make sure I hadn’t missed something important.

  One was about a funeral service for Sylvia on Saturday afternoon. I should go to that, I thought. I left the slip on the top of the pile, then went across the hall and checked my cell phone voicemail. Other than a cheery message from Gina informing me that she’d seen me on three of the four news stations, there was nothing.

  I locked myself into my suite and did a quick check of all the dark corners. I told myself I was making sure I’d straightened up everything after having the place tossed, but really I was checking for murderous intruders.

  I hadn’t looked under the bed for monsters since I was about twelve, but I did it now. Fortunately I found nothing scarier than a couple of dust bunnies.

  Satisfied that I was safe, I ran a hot bath and lit a bunch of candles, then poured some sandalwood oil into the tub and soaked until the water went tepid. I was sleepy by then, the previous short night having caught up with me. I went to bed with the whisper of rain overhead, and didn’t wake until my alarm went off at six.

  When I came downstairs Julio was already in the kitchen, with salsa music playing softly on the boom box. His baker’s cap and pants were paisley in Mardi Gras colors, purple and green with gold accents. A little wild, but all right. I knew there were much more flamboyant things in his wardrobe. With his white chef’s jacket he’d look professional enough for the opening.

  “Morning, boss,” he said, looking up from the counter where he was mixing the first batch of scones. “Wild and crazy night last night?”

  “Ellen, please. Not really. I just did the flowers. Didn’t I get it all cleaned up?”

  “Yeah, but you left the light on in the dining parlor. Saw it when I came in.”

  My heart skittered. I stared at him, wondering if he could be playing an elaborate head game with me. He glanced up.

  “Don’t worry, I turned it off.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and went into the butler’s pantry to make the pot of tea I so badly needed.

  I took it up to my office. Knowing I should keep out of Julio’s way on this busy day, I went over to my suite to make some toast and cut up an orange for breakfast, after which I started going through messages.

  I considered ordering flowers for Sylvia’s funeral, but I knew she would prefer a donation to the Trust, so I wrote out a check and enclosed it in a note card. I wrote a note to Donna, too, expressing formal condolences, but decided not to tell her about the gift to the Trust.

  When Kris arrived she looked in on me and smiled. She was dressed in wispy ivory lace, possibly an antique dress, with a black lace choker at her throat and more black lace in her hair.

  “You look lovely, Kris,” I told her. “Did you have fun last night?”

  “Yeah. We drove down to Albuquerque.”

  “On a Thursday?”

  “That’s the night for Euphoria. Best goth scene in the state.”

  “Oh. Well, I hope the roads weren’t too bad.”

  “Nah. Great storm! Lots of lightning and thunder.”

  I nodded, wondering if the storm could have affected the electricity in the house. That was a comforting thought, as long as I ignored the fact that the light switch had been physically turned on. Repeatedly.

  “Do you hate thunderstorms?” Kris asked.

  “Hm? No, I like them.”

  “‘Cause you looked kind of unhappy there for a second.”

  I picked up the pile of message slips and riffled through them. “Did I? No, I like storms. I used to chase them, back in high school.”

  She laughed. “Not much to do in Santa Fe if you’re a kid.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” I saved out the message about the memorial, then dumped the rest in the wastebasket.

  “I’d better start pulling voicemail,” Kris said. “Maybe we’ll have some reservations. One of my friends said they saw you on the news.” She gave me a cryptic smile, then went to her office.

  The day swung along pretty well from then on. We did have some new reservations, it turned out. Maybe Gina had been right.

  I stayed busy at the hostess station and in the gift shop from the time we opened. It helped that the sun had come out, lighting up the rain-freshened gardens and lawns.

  Tourists emerged from their hotels to stroll the streets of Santa Fe, looking at the shops and museums, and some of them stopping in for a spot of tea. My spirits rose and the day went by so quickly I was surprised when Vi tugged my sleeve and told me it was twenty to four.

  “You said you wanted to change for the opening,” she reminded me.

  “I do. Thanks, Vi. Can you hold down the fort?”

  “Sure.”

  I dashed upstairs and put on the dress I’d chosen for the opening, a Victorian-style amber crepe dress with dark cream-colored lace. I put my hair up and touched up my makeup, and arrived back at the hostess station just as Gina showed up at five minutes to four. She had newspapers tucked under one arm and a bouquet of yellow roses in the other, and was wearing a bright purple dress.

  “Hey, it’s the TV star! Can I have your autograph?” She grinned and handed me the roses, then caught me in a one-armed hug.

  “Gina! You already brought me flowers!” I buried my face in the roses, inhaling their lovely scent.

  “Those were for the tearoom, these are for you. Oh, and I brought copies of the papers. Figured you wouldn’t have time.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Come back to the pantry and help me decide what to do with these. I’ve used all the vases.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about them. Just stick them in a jug and deal with them later.”

  “That’s a great idea! I have a pitcher they’d look wonderful in.”

  We went back to the pantry where I pulled out a large, green-tinted Mexican glass pitcher. With a few inches of water in the bottom, it was perfect for the roses. I played with them a little, spreading them out, picking off a leaf here and there.

  “Those would look nice on the mantel in the dining parlor,” Gina said.

  I shot her a look. By this point I was suspicious of any interest in the dining parlor, beyond the point of reason, I knew.

  “I want to talk to you later about the dining parlor,” I said. “And right now I want to talk to the staff about it. Could you ask Vi to step back to the pantry for a minute?”

  Gina fetched Vi while I gathered the others in the pantry. Julio and Mick joined us, and I rang Kris’s phone to ask her to come down. Everyone crowded into the little room, surrounded by pots of fresh-brewed tea keeping hot under velvet cozies and serving trays decked with fresh flowers. Dee looked at me expectantly, Iz fiddled with the flowers on the tea trays, and Mick stared into space, zoned on his tunes. He hastily removed his ear buds as Vi a
nd Gina came in.

  “Just a few quick words before the party,” I said. “First of all I want to thank all of you for your hard work, and for putting up with the upheaval of the last couple of days. Secondly, for those of you working with the guests, I want to ask you not to show the dining parlor. We’re keeping that room closed for today. Better keep them out of the kitchen, too,” I added, glancing at Julio. “They’re welcome to go into all the tea parlors. Any questions?”

  Vi raised a hand. “Who’s watching the gift shop?”

  “Let’s take turns,” said Dee. “Half an hour each.”

  “I’ll go first,” Iz offered.

  Leaving them to work out the schedule, I carried the pitcher of roses to the front of the house and put them on the mantel in the north parlor. The room was filled with flowers now, evoking a conservatory. It smelled heavenly and looked quite lovely.

  I had opened the pocket doors to make the front parlor into one large, square room, and with Mick’s help had moved aside the screens and pulled the credenzas that normally served as sub-dividers into the center to form a buffet table. It was there that we’d serve the afternoon tea that would demonstrate Julio’s talent to our first official guests.

  The bells on the front door jingled. I went out to greet the first arrivals for the grand opening, and was soon busy welcoming a steady flow of guests, checking names off the reservation list Kris had printed out. That list was longer than I had expected, I was pleased to see. Many of the names on it were friends, like Katie and Manny Salazar and Aunt Nat, but there were also lots of people I didn’t know. As they arrived I noticed that quite a number of them were college age, and a number of those were rather striking in appearance.

  One young man was resplendent in a black morning coat and a top hat which he very courteously removed as he came into the tearoom. His straight, dark hair was loose and hung in a shining waterfall down his back, longer than mine, I noted with slight envy. He carried an ivory-headed walking stick to complete the ensemble. I only caught a glimpse of the knob beneath his hand, but thought it looked a little like a skull.

  A friend of Kris’s? I was too busy to ponder it. The main parlor was beginning to get crowded by now, and Dee and Vi were moving through the room filling teacups.

  Leaving Iz in charge at the hostess station, I joined the chattering guests. Kris had come down and was doing her bit, moving from group to group. I saw her cross the room to where three of the college-age guests, all women, were admiring a statuette replica of the Nike of Samothrace that stood on a pedestal in the corner of Lily. Two of them had black hair and the third had vivid henna-red hair that brushed the shoulders of her black lace dress.

  “Julio’s ready,” Dee said in my ear.

  “Thanks. He can go ahead and bring out the savories,” I told her.

  She nodded and hurried out with an empty teapot. I stepped in front of the fireplace and raised my hands, and the chatter died down. Taking a deep breath, I smiled.

  “Thank you all for attending our grand opening. I and the staff of the Wisteria Tearoom are delighted to welcome you today.”

  There was a smattering of applause from the few guests who didn’t already have teacups. Gina winked at me, then turned to smile at the gentleman she was talking to, a suntanned, sandy-haired man I didn’t recognize.

  He was dressed in rancher formal: a brown suede jacket and bolo tie over a white pinstriped western-style shirt and new blue jeans. He, too, had removed his hat (a cowboy model, no doubt, which I presumed was now keeping good company with the topper on the hat rack in the hall). I wondered if Gina had found a new beau.

  “To celebrate our opening we’re serving a full, three-course afternoon tea,” I said, glancing toward the hall where I saw Julio and Dee waiting with platters of food. “The first course of savories will be presented by our chef, Julio Delgado.”

  Julio came in, proudly bearing a large platter on which toast points, lettuce, cornichons, minced onions, capers, and chopped hard-boiled egg were all artfully arranged around a large tower of molded pâté. He set it on the sideboard with a ceremonial flourish.

  Dee’s platter of deviled eggs joined it, and Vi followed with plates of tiny cucumber and watercress sandwiches. They all went back to the kitchen and returned with a brie en croûte, a platter of cherry tomatoes stuffed with chive cream cheese mousse, and my parents’ giant crystal punch bowl brimming with chilled shrimp and wedges of lemon.

  I caught Julio’s elbow and brought him forward to take a bow, then let him escape back to the kitchen while the guests fell on the savories with enthusiasm. The girls returned with fresh pots of tea and began making the rounds, filling cups and smiling at the guests, lovely in their lavender dresses and white aprons.

  The guests began to disperse through the tearoom, spilling across the hall into the south parlor to find seats while they enjoyed their tea and savories. I walked through the rooms and stopped to chat with each group. I spotted a familiar-looking head of platinum hair, and ducked behind a screen.

  It was Willow. I was so not ready to talk to her.

  I went out into the hall and saw Claudia Pearson coming in the front doors. She wore a hat and gloves again, this time over a forest green suit. I smiled and went forward to greet her.

  “I’m sorry to be late,” she said. “Still catching up at the Trust.”

  “I’m so glad you could come! We’re on the first course, so you’re really not late. Please help yourself,” I said, gesturing toward the main parlor. “Nat and Manny are in Hyacinth if you’d care to join them.”

  “Thanks, I think I will. My, what a beautiful spread,” she added, gazing at the sideboard. “I thought Mr. Ingraham gave you a nice notice in the New Mexican, by the way.”

  “Did he? I haven’t seen it.”

  Keeping an eye out for Willow, I fetched Claudia a cup of tea while she helped herself to the savories, then walked her over to Hyacinth and saw her comfortably settled with my aunt and Manny. It was chickenhearted of me, but I wasn’t ready to return to the main parlor. Instead I went back to the pantry, where Vi glanced up at me from making more tea.

  “Where are those newspapers Gina brought? I thought I left them in here.”

  “Dee stuck them up on the shelf,” Vi said.

  I pulled them down and searched through the New Mexican for Mr. Ingraham’s food column. I was a bit disappointed to find that the review was for another restaurant, but beneath it under the heading “Eye on the Town” was a single line: “Opening this week is the Wisteria Tearoom, a promising new establishment offering traditional English tea with Victorian ambiance.”

  Not bad. I folded up the paper and tucked it back up on the shelf, hoping that the nod meant Mr. Ingraham would come back and try the full afternoon tea, and perhaps give us a review.

  “There you are,” said Julio, looking into the pantry. “Come here a minute.”

  “What is it?”

  I followed him into the kitchen, worrying that the clotted cream hadn’t, or something equally disastrous. Instead he took a plate off a shelf and showed it to me. It held a selection of the savories, including a tiny pâté mold in the shape of a star.

  “This is yours. I knew you wouldn’t have time to eat anything out there.”

  “Oh, Julio, thank you!” I picked up a deviled egg garnished with capers and hot paprika—there were two of those on the plate, and half a dozen of the shrimp—and bit into it. “Mmm. Divine.”

  He grinned, then a timer went off. “Scones,” he said, and rushed to the oven, leaving the plate in my hands.

  I ate a shrimp, then put the rest back on the shelf and braced myself to face my guests. I glanced around the main parlor and spotted Willow chatting with Bob Hutchins, Katie’s husband. The savories had been pretty thoroughly devoured by now, and Dee was clearing the empty platters while Vi collected dirty plates.

  Gina was setting a stack of fresh plates at one end of the sideboard. I hurried over to her.

  “You
don’t have to do that! You’re a guest!”

  “Just thought I’d help out a bit. You’ve got a full house, congrats!”

  “Thanks. I think Kris stacked the deck a little. Who’s your friend, by the way?”

  Gina glanced toward Rose, where the rancher-looking gent was sitting with Jody Thompson. “That’s Ted. He’s in real estate. Thought I’d show him the tearoom. He deals with a lot of out-of-town folks, and they’re always asking him to recommend places to eat. He might send a few customers your way.”

  “Well, thanks!” I glanced at Ted, who looked at ease in a red velvet wing chair with a cup of tea balanced on his denim-clad knee. “I would never have guessed he was a real estate agent.”

  “He was out showing horse properties to a couple from Connecticut this morning,” Gina said.

  “Ah.”

  As soon as the savories were cleared away, Julio and the girls brought in platters of scones and large bowls of clotted cream, blackberry jam, and lemon curd. There were cheddar scones with scallion butter, orange-lavender scones, currant scones, and heaps of cream scones fresh from the oven. Another platter held an array of sliced tea breads and a bowl of creamed butter to spread on them.

  I called the guests back to the north parlor to hear Julio describe the scones and breads. They listened appreciatively and attacked the food with less urgency but no less gusto.

  Things were a little more relaxed now, and after seeing the second course under way I went to the gift shop to check on Iz. I found her just about to hand the hostess duty over to Vi.

  “All present and accounted for,” she said, indicating the guest list. “Plus seven walk-ins. We may need some more tea samplers, we’re almost sold out. Are there more packaged up?”

  “They’re in the storage room upstairs,” I said. “I’ll get them.”

  “I’ll go. You’re busy.” Iz caught up the large, ribboned wicker basket that held the samplers, took the last three out and left them on the display table, and darted out.