Lunch with Jessica Armstrong was a brisk one-hour affair in the dining room at the Frost Inn, where the walls were decorated with a variety of portraits of Robert Frost and the poetically-themed menu offered items such as the Road Less Traveled Salad (Parmesan, pomegranate and brussels sprouts) and Fire and Ice Dessert (deep-fried ice cream).
I ordered a Lovely, Dark and Deep Steak (aged rib eye with red wine sauce) and a beer. Jessica ordered a Nature’s First Green Caesar salad and sparkling water.
“Wait,” she said as the waiter was about to leave with our orders, “is there raw egg in the Caesar dressing?”
“Yes, ma’am, it’s made the traditional way,” he replied.
“Then I’ll have the chicken salad instead. No mayo.”
Once we had our drinks, I asked, “How are you doing, Jess?”
“Okay. Good, I guess.”
I wondered how she was handling the still-recent loss of her father but didn’t know how to ask, so instead I said, “How’s your mother?”
“Fighting fit.” Jessica gave me a wry smile. “She positively loathes you. Says you’ve brought scandal and heartbreak to this town, and irreparably damaged the local economy.”
Jessica’s mother, Michelle Armstrong, was the town clerk and treasurer, which pretty much made her the closest thing to a mayor Pitchford had. She was on a mission to turn the town into the heart of New England tourism, and anything that got in the way of that — even justice for a decade-old murder — was taboo.
“And here I was expecting the key to Pitchford for my efforts.”
“Yeah, don’t hold your breath.”
The waiter brought our drinks, and I took a long swallow of beer. “And Blunt? How’s he doing?”
Jessica’s brother was a long-time drug addict, one of the victims of Vermont’s plague of heroin addiction, and quite possibly even more of a thorn in Mrs. Armstrong’s side than I was.
Her face hardened, and instead of answering my question, she said, “How are your parents?”
“Fine, a little older and frailer. My father’s still a gem, and my mother’s still a kook.”
I felt a bit bad saying this, because I figured I was more-or-less a kook now, too. Also, to my chagrin, I was discovering that my mother wasn’t always wrong, as I’d assumed for most of my life. In fact, one of the most upsetting aspects of this whole psychic thing was how often my mother was being proved right. Not in everything, of course — I still believed most of her far-out theories and bizarre practices were ludicrous and without any basis in reality — but enough to trouble me and make me question my once-certain view of the universe.
The waiter arrived with our food, and I dug in. Jessica pushed pieces of lettuce and shavings of Parmesan around on her plate as I told her about my studies, and she caught me up on news about her family and life. Her twin sons were wonderful, Jessica said, they’d just turned four, and judging by their finger-painting creations, they were all set to become artistic prodigies just like their father. Jessica’s husband was a temperamental artist who, on the only occasion I’d ever met him, I’d found to be arrogant and demanding. She seemed to still be in love with him — or at least, I thought, as she raved about how he was currently taking the art world by storm with his recent mixed-media series on Disconnected Identity in the Connected World, she was still smitten by his talent.
“He’s been booked for an exhibition in New York, at the end of May,” Jessica said.
“Wow, that’s great.” I swallowed the last of my beer and looked around for the waiter to order another. “And he must be so pleased about the baby.”
“What baby?” she asked, startled.
I gestured at her midriff. “You’re expecting, aren’t you? A little girl?”
She glanced down at her still-flat stomach. “How did you know that?”
Good question. I tried to think. “Didn’t you mention it earlier? Or maybe in the store the other day?”
“No. I haven’t told anyone yet, not even Nico. I just confirmed it at the doctor this morning. And I don’t know the sex yet.”
“Oh.”
“So how did you know?” she demanded.
My mother would no doubt have some theories, but I merely said, “Lucky guess? Or maybe because you’re not drinking, and you were worried about eating raw egg?”
She seemed mollified by my explanation. “Look, please don’t tell anyone yet. I haven’t decided– Just keep it under your hat, okay?”
I kept my expression neutral as I mimed zipping my lips and tossing away the key, but inside my mind was racing. Had Jessica been about to say, “I haven’t decided whether to keep it,” or only something like, “I haven’t decided when I’ll break the news”?
She wasn’t showing yet, but I had an idea that pregnant bellies didn’t become obvious until around the fourth or fifth month. It was early March now, and I’d interrupted her and her lover getting it on in the back room of her gallery just before Christmas, so it was entirely possible that the baby wasn’t even her husband’s.
While we ate, we chatted about safer topics — my life in Boston, the closing down of the local high school due to lack of students, a local project to encourage the nesting of peregrine falcons — before she dropped her fork and called for the check.
“Sorry, I need to get back to the gallery.”
“No problem, I need to get moving, too. I’m meeting Ryan Jackson this afternoon.”
Jessica gave me a knowing look. “Oh, yes?”
“Not like that,” I said hurriedly. “It’s about the Laini Carter investigation. You know I found the body?”
“I read that in The Bugle.”
“Did you know Laini Carter?”
“A little. Enough to know she was brilliant at her job. That syrup business had been chugging along for ages, but it was only when she joined in the last couple of years that it started to fly. She dragged it into the twenty-first century in terms of marketing — set up a fantastic presence on social media and apparently grew a huge email database. She raised the bottom line significantly. I don’t know how they’re going to cope without her.”
I waved aside her attempt to pay for the bill and handed the waiter my credit card.
“I tried to poach her, more than once.”
“You tried to do what?” I asked.
“I tried to get her to do marketing for the gallery, but she wasn’t interested, not even in doing a few hours on the side. And my mother tried to persuade her into doing some publicity and promotion work for the town, but she declined that, too,” Jessica said.
“Did she say why?”
“Initially I thought it must be because she wanted to give her all to Sweet and Smoky, or maybe that her employment contract didn’t permit her to do work for other organizations. But when I asked her about it, she said she didn’t need more stakes in the ground, or something like that. I didn’t understand what she meant but didn’t want to pry.”
“Do you know her boyfriend, Carl Mendez?”
“Not really. He and Laini occasionally visited the gallery, and once he bought one of Nico’s paintings, an oil, I think. But I do recall this one time when they came in together and he wanted to commission Nico to do a portrait of Laini. Well, that was a no from the get-go. Nico creates art when inspiration strikes; he captures what the muse sends him. He’s not in the business of painting pretty ladies.” Jessica gave a little laugh and bit her lip. “I mean, I don’t want to sound patronizing. Laini wasn’t pretty — she was … extraordinary. So beautiful, you couldn’t even be jealous, you know? It’s like she was the work of art.”
I signed the credit card slip, nodding.
“Anyway, before I could turn them down, Laini herself told Carl no. And then she insisted on buying him a painting for his bedroom wall. I remember that she said it like that, ‘A painting for your bedroom wall,’ and not ‘our bedroom wall.’ It struck me as odd, because they were a couple, and everyone knew they were living together at his place.” Jessica picked up her handbag. “Maybe she didn’t feel completely at home there.”
Or maybe Laini hadn’t been quite as committed to the relationship as Carl had.