Sheila Tierney came out of hiding on Friday. I don’t know if she was bored at the hotel or had simply gotten over her snit and dared to show her face in public again. Probably both.
Or maybe she missed her daughter.
She arrived unannounced at the Emporium at two o’clock. Lauren had spent the morning in the tearoom, helping Jayne in the kitchen. She came back after lunch to tell me she’d decided she wanted to own a bookstore where she would serve afternoon tea to the customers. She could do that between her games on the professional tennis circuit and her medical studies.
“I’m here!” Sheila announced as she stepped into the bookshop, dragging her red suitcase behind her. Lauren squealed and practically flew across the room. Sheila wrapped her arms around her daughter and held her close. She wore the red and white dress and had done her hair and makeup as normal, no longer trying to be in disguise.
“Ready to go home?” she asked when Lauren released her.
“Oh yeah.” Lauren turned to me. “Is it okay if I go home now, Gemma? I’ve enjoyed working here, but my mom …”
“Off you go,” I said. “You’re welcome to drop in any time.”
“We have to go to Gemma’s house and get Snowball, Mom.”
Sheila looked at me. “Would you mind giving us a lift? I walked from the hotel, and that was more than enough.”
“I don’t have my car with me—sorry. My house is on the way to yours. I’ll give Lauren a key, and she can get the cat and her things. You can drop the key here next time you’re in the neighborhood.”
“Thank you.” Sheila swallowed hard. “For … uh … everything.” She choked out the words. Gratitude didn’t come easily to Sheila Tierney.
“Any time,” I said.
“Guess what, darling?” she said to Lauren. “Dad’s on his way home!”
“Yeah!” Lauren threw her arms up and sprang into the air. “Did you hear that, Gemma! Dad’s coming home. We’re going to be a family again.”
Sheila had the grace to avoid my eyes.
I handed Lauren the key to my house.
“Do you think Violet’s going to miss Snowball, Gemma?” she asked.
“Not as much as I’m going to miss you.”
“You can bring Violet for a visit sometime, if you want.”
“I might just do that.”
“Will you come and watch me play tennis tomorrow? It’s the tournament.”
“What time?”
“My game starts at two thirty.”
“I’d like to. If I can get away from the store, I will. Saturdays are busy in here.”
“I can manage,” Ashleigh called.
“Ask Jayne too,” Lauren said. “I helped her make tarts and cupcakes, Mom. It was fun. I’m going to have a bakery when I grow up.”
They left, Lauren still chattering about all the plans she had for her future.
I stood at the window and watched them walk down the street. Lauren had a bright life ahead indeed. If her parents didn’t mess it up.
Irene had called me yesterday from her conference. She’d come back if she was needed, but … An editor from the New York Times was scheduled to speak, and everyone was saying he was prospecting new hires. She’d hate to miss the opportunity but …
I told her all was under control and Lauren was fine staying with me.
I texted Irene now to let her know Sheila was home and David was due shortly, and then I went back to work.
The shop seemed rather lonely for the remainder of the day.
“Let’s do something fun tonight after the shop closes,” I said to Jayne over a cup of English Breakfast and a scone at our partners’ meeting in the tearoom.
“I like fun,” she said. “What do you have in mind?”
“How about dinner? We can go to the Café, and Andy can take a break and join us. I’ll ask Ryan.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“I’ll call for a reservation when I get back to the store. How about nine fifteen?”
Jayne took out her phone. “Why don’t I do that now? You’ll forget.”
I was rather insulted. “I never forget.”
“Gemma, you never remember.”
Andy’s place, the Blue Water Café, occupies one of the best locations on the West London waterfront. It sits half on the pier by the fishing dock, with an incomparable view of the boat-filled small harbor and the open Atlantic Ocean beyond. As it faces east, it doesn’t get a sunset, but tonight the long orange and red rays drew lines on the water against a dramatic backdrop of the darkening sky. The restaurant is always busy on a Friday night in summer, but as we were having dinner with the owner, we got one of the best tables, tucked in a corner of the deck, perched high over the dark cool waters where small harbor seals swam and played.
Jayne had gone home for a nap after the tearoom closed, and I’d come straight from work. I was the first to arrive. I’d barely settled myself at a table for four before the waiter arrived with menus. “’Evening, Gemma. Get you something while you’re waiting for the others?”
“I’ll have a glass of sauvignon blanc, thanks. Can you tell Andy I’m here?”
“Sure.” He put a menu in front of me, but I pushed it away. I always have the same thing when I come to the Café. Some people think that’s odd, but I know what I like, so why take a chance on trying something new and being disappointed?
Ryan and Jayne arrived before my drink. Ryan crossed the deck toward me, but Jayne waved and then ducked down the hallway to the kitchen.
Ryan kissed the top of my head and pulled up his chair. “This is a good idea. I need some downtime.” The waiter put my glass in front of me, and Ryan said, “I’ll have a Nantucket Grey Lady, please.” He turned to me. “Jayne told me Andy’s hoping to get a break and come out and join us. Are things happening on that front?”
“Yes, and I’m delighted. Jayne’s blissfully happy, and I know Andy’s the perfect man for her.”
“You aren’t interfering, I hope.”
“Me? Perish the thought.” I refrained from saying that all my interfering had come to naught, and they’d found each other only after I’d given up. I decided not to speculate as to if there was a deeper meeting to that.
“I’m glad for them, and I hope it works with their crazy schedules. I can’t imagine a tougher life than being a chef in a top restaurant,” said the man who solved murder most foul for a living and often went days without sleep.
Speaking of going without sleep … I remembered last night with a twinge of guilt. When the poor man did manage to get to bed, someone had woken him up. I smiled at him. He smiled back.
“You don’t look too bad,” I said. Some of the tiredness had lifted from his eyes, he was freshly shaven, and his big warm smile was back, as was the twinkle in the blue eyes I loved so much.
“Gee, thanks, Gemma.”
“I mean, you don’t look as bad as you normally do.”
“This is getting better and better.”
“I mean,” I floundered, “you look like you’ve had some sleep on the job. I mean, sleeping when not working. On the job. With Louise. At nighttime. Sleeping at nighttime, and not with Louise.” I firmly shut my mouth.
“I’m glad we cleared that one up at least.” His beer arrived and he lifted his glass. “Cheers, as they say in England.”
“Cheers.” We clinked glasses and grinned at each other.
“In answer to your inelegantly put question, I did get home and catch a few hours of sleep before coming here. I needed it because someone disturbed me during the night.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Not a problem. I’ve been woken up by less pleasant people. I assume you know Sheila Tierney has left the Beach Front Hotel and gone home?”
“She came into the shop to get Lauren. She said her husband’s coming home too.”
Ryan nodded. “I called at their house. David was there. I asked Sheila if she’d been having professional or monetary problems with Anna Wentworth. At first, she pretended not to know what I was talking about, but David told her that I obviously knew, so she might as well spit it out. Whereupon she fell all over herself telling me how hard done by she was regarding their cowriting the book and how nasty Anna had been to her. David finally had to interrupt to get her to stop talking. I think he thought she was about to incriminate herself.”
“He thinks she’s guilty?”
“Possibly. Or he didn’t want me to be there all day. I took her manuscript away and also a copy of Anna’s second book. I’ll have someone compare them.”
“They’ll match,” I said. “Do you think she did it? Killed Anna, I mean.”
He sipped at his beer. “I’m not committing to anything, but I don’t think so. Frankly, she’s not too bright, Gemma, and judging by what more than a few people have told me about her, she’s wildly impulsive. If she did it, she’d have confessed by now. I also have to consider that she has no police record more serious than a couple of parking tickets. Meaning, no record of violence.”
“No record doesn’t mean it never happened. She did attack Anna.”
“In front of a couple of dozen ticket-paying citizens and garden tour guides. Hair-pulling and kicking and a heck of a lot of screaming. From all accounts, Anna gave as good as she got, and more than a few witnesses implied Anna egged Sheila on. If Sheila had killed Anna, I don’t believe she’d have been able to be so cool about it and cover it up so well.”
That was an aspect I’d not considered. I’d laid out the facts for myself as I saw them and hadn’t been able to dismiss Sheila as a suspect. Ryan was probably right: she wouldn’t have been able to keep up the pretense under police questioning. She’d have been more likely to want to justify herself.
“Then again,” I said, “she is a drama teacher. Maybe she’s a better actor than we thought. The outburst over the garden vandalism and the attack on Anna might have been premeditated. Designed to make it look as though she’s a rash, impulsive woman.”
“You’ve overthought it, Gemma. If you have one fault, that’s it.”
“Only one?”
“I said if you had only one.”
“What about the vandalism? Any idea who did that?”
“We’ve sent some things found in Sheila’s garden for fingerprint comparisons, but we don’t have the results yet, and I’m not expecting much. The guilty party almost certainly wore gloves. At a guess, it was probably Anna. No one else that we know of had any reason to do it. A good number of the members of the garden club—and we’ve spoken to every one of them we can find—are more upset about the destruction of Sheila’s garden than the death of Anna.”
“Did Anna have that many enemies?”
He chuckled. “They’re a single-minded bunch. They liked Anna fine, although they say she didn’t have a lot to do with the club lately. I mean that, to them, the garden’s more important than the woman.”
“I can think of a few Sherlockians like that. Not about gardens, though.”
“Right. Sheila’s was the only place that got hit. Unlikely to have been teenagers or drunken college kids on a rampage, as no one else has reported anything like that, and we didn’t find the usual detritus, such as broken beer bottles, near the scene. Sheila had been a high school teacher, and not a popular one by all accounts, but she left West London High five years ago. The kids would have gone on to other resentments long ago.”
“What happens now?” I asked.
“Now? You mean about the murder? We’ll keep the case open, of course, but the chief’s inclined to believe it was a random thing, and Louise agrees. That’s not a conclusion he comes to easily. Not in a tourist town at the beginning of the season.”
“Louise agrees. You didn’t say you did.”
“All I can act on is the evidence I have. And I have none.”
I shook my head. “No. The idea of a random attack is too much of a coincidence happening immediately after the blowup over the garden.”
“Coincidences happen, Gemma.”
“‘The universe is rarely so lazy.’”
He raised an eyebrow. “Not Sherlock Holmes, I hope. I can’t take the advice of a fictional detective to my chief as a reason for me to keep investigating.”
“Holmes, yes, but not an original. The Sherlock TV show.”
“Sorry we’re late.” Jayne slipped into the chair beside me, and Andy took the one opposite. “Last-minute problem in the kitchen.”
“Everything under control?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah.” Andy glanced around the restaurant deck. Even this late, every table was taken. The soft white fairy lights on the railing broke the dark, and candles burned in hurricane lamps on the tables. Waiters carried plates piled high, people chatted and laughed, glasses and cutlery clinked, and marvelous scents filled the air.
Ryan spread out his arms, taking it all in. “I don’t know how you do it, Andy. Running this place, keeping everything moving smoothly and everyone happy.”
Andy grinned at him. “It’s what I do. I love it. On good days anyway.” He couldn’t help taking a peek at Jayne, looking beautiful and, above all, happy in a navy-blue and white dress and silver jewelry. “Most days are good ones.”
“What’s good today?” Ryan asked.
“Everything,” Jayne said.
“What’s particularly good then?”
“Try the scallops,” Andy said.
“I’m going to,” Jayne said.
When the waiter arrived, Ryan ordered a Caesar salad with his scallops, and Andy asked for a burger, saying he wasn’t in the mood for seafood. I ordered my usual: clam chowder and stuffed sole.
“I’ll just have a glass of wine, thanks. Whatever Gemma’s having,” Jayne said. “I ate earlier.
“Better bring her a platter of calamari,” I said to the waiter as he collected the menus. “Otherwise, I won’t get any of my own dinner.”
“Now,” Jayne said, “no talking about murder tonight.”
“Has there been a murder?” Andy asked. “I didn’t hear about it.”
“Which,” Jayne said, “is why I love you.”
I thought Andy would die of pure happiness.