CHAPTER 25
Tour bus travelers who stopped at my restaurant to eat also loved shopping for cookware. It was a great lure, but the “pans” section of Pans ’N Pancakes was running low on items for sale, and I needed to restock. I stared at tables and shelves groaning with vintage cookware the next morning at nine and gave a happy sigh. Adele hadn’t been kidding when she’d described the sale as big.
The owner of the sprawling home set on a knoll down a quiet country lane had been a chef who’d apparently outfitted his home kitchen with more implements than most restaurants are stocked with. He’d retired in the mid-1950s, so everything was vintage if not officially antique. Now a decade after he’d died, his children had put the property on the market rather than keep it in the family.
This sale wasn’t a live or online auction. Things were priced to move. The cookware cost more than it would have at a flea market but items were still inexpensive enough I could clear a profit on resale. And the selection was amazing.
Vera said the man’s wife had been a quilter, and everything in her sewing room was also up for grabs. In fact, the contents of the entire house were.
I foresaw two problems. One was going to be identifying what I wanted and piling it all in one place. The second would be transporting it to the cashier and from there to Adele’s car. Pans could get heavy and unwieldy, but Adele and Vera had wandered off. I’d text my aunt when I was ready for help.
After I sorted through dozens of cake and muffin tins and picked out fifteen in decent shape with interesting stamping in the metal, I came to a high table of sharp objects. Ice picks and nut choppers, cleavers and corers, plus a wooden block with knives, each in its own slot. Good thing the surface was at bar-table height. I’d hate for a child to grab for one of these implements.
An antique sugar auger made me shudder. A few years ago, a murderer had come after me in my store with one of those. Sixteen inches long with a wooden handle and lethally sharp edges and points, it had been used in days of yore to loosen up usable chunks from big cakes of sugar. Ever since that attack, my store’s cookware display had included a locked, glass-fronted cabinet for anything with a blade.
“That thing looks pretty nasty,” a woman said.
“You bet.” I turned to see Melia Bird smiling at me from a few feet away. “Melia, what a nice surprise.”
“Good morning, Robbie. Are you here to stock up for your store?” Instead of hiking clothes, today she wore blue Capris and a blue-and-white striped top, a comfortable outfit that was stylish at the same time.
“Exactly.” I glanced around. “Is Buck here?”
“No, he had to work. I drove down with a few girlfriends. We’re making a day of it. Lunch, shopping. You know.”
“That sounds fun.”
“I’m a quilter when I’m not minding children’s health. One friend collects antique books.” She gestured toward a woman picking through a collection of cast-iron pots and pans. “That one is a neurosurgeon, but also an amazing amateur chef.”
A neurosurgeon who loved to cook. Who knew? “Robbie,” Melia lowered her voice, “I heard something interesting.”
“About?”
“About what happened in Nashville.” She shot me a pointed look.
Ooh. I tried to hide my surprise.
“Well,” she continued, “about one of the people who might be involved.”
“Okay. I’d love to hear it.”
“It’s this way. I met Zeke Martin last year when he designed a series of information sheets for our pediatrics practice. We like to hand out short pieces on things like asthma, immunizations, nutrition, and so on to our parents, and we create our own so we vet the facts and don’t rely on anyone else’s presentation.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” I said.
“The handouts have to be attractive and readable so they don’t scare folks off. Zeke gave us a reasonable quote, and we liked the look of his portfolio. We hired him. But . . .”
“But?”
“As he did the work, he kept finding reasons to tack on additional costs. And when I met with him in person, he badmouthed his wife, whom I didn’t even know. It was in very poor taste.”
“That’s too bad.” But why was she volunteering this information?
“I told Buck, and he said he’d pass it along.” As if she’d read my mind, she went on. “I know you like to do your own investigations, and you’ve been very helpful to my husband in the past, uncovering details he wasn’t able to.”
“Thank you. So, you’re thinking Zeke might have been the one who . . . did it.” I didn’t want to say the word murder aloud in here.
She shrugged. “It was a thought. He might have been paying alimony to his ex. If he’s prone to financial mismanagement, which it seemed to me he was, he could have wanted to get out from under that burden.”
“Using extreme measures.”
“Indeed.” She gave a little laugh. “Nobody I know does what someone did to Evermina to get out of a debt owed.”
“Same here.”
“Listen, I’m glad I caught you, but I need to get over to the sewing room before everything’s gone.”
“Go,” I said. “It was good to see you again, Melia. And thank you.”
By telling me about Zeke, it seemed she wanted to pay me back a little for helping Buck in the past. I welcomed the gesture. And the information. Zeke’s financial situation definitely bore looking into—if I could figure out how.