I headed through the now-busy parking lot and thought about what Noah had said—or implied. If Maggie’s death wasn’t an accident, Noah seemed to believe the love triangle among her, Theo, and Charles could be motive enough for murder. That implicated Charles and, just as a complete wild card, maybe Theo had returned to the island after storming out of the beach house, found Maggie behind the wheel, and they quarreled. Throw in Vivian, who apparently had been so jealous of Maggie she spied on her tryst with Charles and captured it on film, and the list of possible suspects was longer than the list of those who were innocent or, so far, uninvolved: Mel and Paul.
Except Paul’s death seemed to be somehow tied in with the Mandrake Society—the wineglass deliberately placed next to his body—and the same glass had also been at the scene where Mel died, reportedly of a heart attack. One wineglass and one dead body is someone haunted by the past; two starts to sound like a creepy pattern, too unusual a coincidence not to be relevant to what happened to Stephen Falcone, who I now suspected died of exposure to anthrax.
I had learned plenty from Noah about the research Charles’s group had been doing, and that explained why it had been so critical to keep Stephen’s death quiet. But Noah had also revealed the tantalizing fact that Maggie didn’t know how to drive a car—though she wouldn’t have been the first person in the world to get behind the wheel and drive drunk without a license, especially if she was upset enough. The police must have believed that latter theory or someone would have been arrested or charged with something. I wondered whose car she’d taken.
I got into the Mini, opened my phone, and called Kit. She answered midway through the second ring.
“Do I know you? Who is this? Wait—don’t tell me. Lucie Something-or-other. You own that vineyard.”
“I was only gone four days, not four years.”
“You could have called.”
“I am calling.”
“I meant before.”
“Before what? I got in Wednesday at midnight. It’s Friday morning. What’s going on? You sound like the eighth dwarf. Crabby.”
“Sorry. I was here last night until midnight. And the night before. And the night before.”
“You can’t go on like this.”
“You’re telling me. If you divide my salary by the number of hours I live in my office, I’m practically paying them to let me work here.”
“Maybe you should find another job.”
“Yeah, well, I’m worried about that, too,” she said. “That one of these days I might be job hunting.”
“You think they’ll fire you? Who else would work her heart out the way you do?”
“Some child straight out of college who will toil for a third of my pay and be grateful.”
“The child won’t have your experience.”
“The bosses won’t care. It’s the bean counters who are driving this thing, Luce.”
“Jeez, now I’m depressed.”
“Yeah, well try being me.”
I heard a deep sigh and then the sucking sound of a straw at the bottom of a glass. “Moving on,” she said. “What’s up? How was California? See Quinn?”
“California was fine, I saw Quinn, and I need a favor,” I said. “Pretty please?”
“Wow, that was fast. Thanks for dishing,” she said as her computer dinged that she had e-mail. “I know how this works, you know. You want me to say yes before you tell me what it is.”
“You are so suspicious. It’s just an archive search of a couple of old news stories.”
“Huh. That sounds harmless. Which old stories?”
“A woman who died in a car accident forty years ago. Drunk driving. Maggie Hilliard, probably Margaret Hilliard. She drove off the bridge to Pontiac Island and drowned. It might have been fairly sensational. And second—this one I’m not sure about—can you find anything about an autistic man named Stephen Falcone who disappeared, say, six months or so before her accident? Might be less than six months. He might have lived locally. He had a sister, Elinor. She might have reported him to the police when he took off.”
“That’s a lot of ‘mights.’ You’re only looking for the story about him going missing?” she asked. “Anybody find him?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maggie Hilliard, among other people. He died a few months later. You won’t find anything on that.”
“All right, I’ll look. But you’re going to have to connect the dots between these two when I see you. You got me all curious.”
“Me, too. That’s why I was wondering if there was anything in the press back then. The only person still alive who knew them might be lying about what happened to one or both of them.”
“And that would be?”
“Charles Thiessman.”
“Are you kidding me? Ambassador Charles Thiessman?” I heard her chair creak and the click of computer keys.
“Yup.”
“What are you saying, Luce?”
“Nothing yet. I could be completely wrong about this.”
Kit’s computer keys continued clicking. Finally she said, “This is going to take some time. Can you be more specific on your dates or a time line?”
“Try looking during the months of June, July, and August in 1970 for Maggie Hilliard. She was at a beach house party the night it happened. Sounds like summer to me.”
More clicking. I finished the lukewarm water from my water bottle, set it back in the cup holder, and waited.
“Nope, nothing.” Kit’s desk chair creaked and her e-mail bell went off again. I heard her mutter something and she said, “Look, my managing editor is about to go nuclear about something, so I gotta go. He has this thing about business hours being the time we ought to be doing work.”
“Oh, gosh, I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
“Don’t worry, I do that just fine all by myself. Look, if I find anything, I’ll bring it to the dinner tonight,” she said. “Thank God we digitized our archives so at least I don’t have to squint at microfilm.”
“Tonight?”
She must have heard the disappointment in my voice. “It happened forty years ago, Luce. Why so urgent all of a sudden? What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you. It’s way too long to go into now.”
“I’ll do some poking around on my lunch hour, okay?” She sighed. “I never go out anymore. Just stuck at my desk all the time. I may as well do something interesting … aw, jeez, there’s my boss e-mailing again. I’d better go. I’ll call you later if I get any hits.”
I stopped by the General Store on my way home from Seely’s to pick up a few items—milk, peanut butter, and bread, as well as whatever was left in Thelma’s baked goods case after the Romeos swept through like a plague of locusts for their daily fix of doughnuts, coffee, and gossip. Eli had an appetite that reminded me of a Hoover vacuum, and even Hope, a delicate little angel who looked as though she ate like a bird, inhaled food like there was a hole in the bottom of her shoe.
Thelma liked to boast that she had more variety on her shelves than even the most upscale grocery store in the region, which happened to be true since none of those places carried ammunition, camping equipment, bloodworms, fireworks (in season), chain saw replacement parts, and two kinds of hoof polish. As for food, she stocked the emergency staples, or as she liked to say, the essential white stuff you needed to survive the white stuff of a blizzard: milk, bread, and toilet paper. But the currency that had kept her clients loyal for five decades was her single-handed talent for turning our little country store into a throbbing nerve center of information about every who, what, where, why, and when that went on in two counties. Over the years, she’d cultivated a far-flung network of sources—anyone who walked through her door—and refined her interviewing technique so that she’d either surprise out of you what she wanted to know, or scare you until you told her.
The Christmas sleigh bells Thelma used as a low-tech security system jingled and a blast of frigid air-conditioning hit me as I walked inside. The parking lot had been empty, but it sounded like a party in the back room, which meant she was already engrossed in one of her beloved soap operas or a game show.
She yelled, “I’m coming,” in her reedy voice and a moment later stood in the doorway, making an entrance with the dramatic timing of a venerable leading lady appearing on stage and the verve of a teenager who liked showing more skin than fabric. Her face lit up when she saw me and I knew that meant I was about to be squeezed for the details of my grandfather’s visit and—if she’d heard about it—how it had gone between Quinn and me in California.
“Why, Lucille! Speak of the devil.” She adjusted her thick trifocals and smoothed wrinkles out of a brilliant canary yellow knit dress that looked like it had shrunk a size or two in the dryer. “I was just talking about you a little while ago.”
It was too late to say that she was out of what I needed. She’d seen my hand, still on the doorknob, so she knew I hadn’t even set foot in the store. I could feel the wagons circling around me.
“Really? Who were you talking to?”
“One or two of the Romeos. Someone said you and Luc went out to California for a few days. Did you patch things up with Quinn? You did see him, of course? And come on in, child. You’re standing in that doorway like you grew roots.”
“How did you …?” There was no point conning her. She knew. “I mean, well, yes, Quinn and I saw each other.”
She clacked across the room in stiletto mules that matched her dress, a sly smile on her face. “Oh, I just put two and two together when I heard about you going to California. You know me, Lucille, and that special seventh sense I’ve got for knowing things before people tell me.” She tapped her forehead with a bony finger. “It’s called extraterrestrial perception.”
“You always say that.”
“Yes, indeedy.” She walked over to a table where three coffeepots were lined up in a tidy row and straightened the “Regular,” “Decaf,” and “Fancy” signs that hung above them. “How about a nice cup of java? We could talk a little.”
“Thanks, but I just stopped by to get a few groceries and those three blueberry muffins you’ve got left.”
“Deary me, I should have wrapped one of those muffins and put it away,” she said. “You can have two of’em. The other one’s for the Thiessmans’ gardener. He said he’d drop by this afternoon. The poor man looked falling-down tired when he showed up this morning. I felt so sorry that I opened up early, just for him.”
She stood there, hands on hips, regarding me. Thelma had extraterrestrial perception, all right. I wondered how much she knew about Charles using Juliette’s gardener as a late-night chauffeur for guests at his lodge, and my own firsthand experience being driven home half sloshed with Pépé in the wee small hours of the morning. Maybe Thelma was baiting me—again.
Who cared? I wanted to know what she knew.
“Come to think of it, that coffee does smell good and I’m still tired from the trip. What’s today’s Fancy? I think I’ve got time for a quick cup.”
“Course you do. And it’s Bean There, Done That. That’ll perk you up.” She reached for a Styrofoam cup. “Make yourself to home, Lucille.”
I took the coffee after she fixed it and sat in a spindle-back rocker across from the one she always sat in.
“Juliette Thiessman is selling Dominique a lot of produce from her garden for our dinner tonight. I guess that’s why her gardener’s working overtime.” I concentrated on stirring my coffee.
Thelma settled herself in her rocking chair and straightened a pile of soap opera and gossip magazines on a little table next to her. “Oh, he’s working extra hours, all right. But it’s not hoeing and weeding. It’s that little side business he’s got goin’ on for Charles.”
I bumped the stirrer too hard against the cup and nearly sloshed hot coffee on my lap. “What business would that be?”
“Well, of course he’s never said, but you tell me what to think when a man shows up in my store first thing in the morning smelling like he just took a bath in a vat of perfume?”
“Uh … I don’t know.”
“He’s driving Charles’s girlfriends home, that’s what. After Charles finishes having his way with them in that little love nest he’s got in the woods. At first I thought the perfume was Juliette’s. Then I remembered what my grandmamma, a wise and proper lady, always said: A woman should pick one special fragrance to be her unmistakable scent for life and that’s how a man will remember her. Men find it very erratic, you know. Sort of a … turn on.”
She plucked at imaginary lint on her dress. Her cheeks had gone pink.
I’d heard that before, too—about the erotic and sensual power of scent, especially a woman’s signature perfume—when I worked as a translator at the perfume museum in Grasse, France, before I came home to run the vineyard. But right now I didn’t know what to say to Thelma because I had a feeling she knew more about my relationship with Charles than she let on—and this was another setup to see if I’d spill any information.
I sipped my coffee. “It does sound very romantic, though it’s hard to wear perfume with what I do all day. Really screws things up when you’re trying to make wine.”
“Don’t you see, Lucille?” She sounded frustrated that I had missed the point. “That’s how I knew!”
Now I’d lost her. “Knew what?”
“That it wasn’t Juliette who’d been in the car. Juliette wears Chanel Number 5. Trust me, I’ve got a nose like a bloodhound. In fact, all the Johnson women have very keen oligarchy systems.” She touched a finger to the side of her nose. “That poor man comes in here regular as rain for a morning cup of coffee just reeking of Dior or Ralph Lawrence or whatever the latest one was wearing. It’s just about killed Juliette, don’t you know?”
I sat up in my chair. “Juliette knows about this?”
“Lordy!” Thelma waved a hand at me. “She’s known for ages.”
“How do you know she knows?”
“When a man’s cheating on his wife the way Charles cheats on Juliette, she knows. Lately I’ve been thinking that it’s finally getting to her, after all this time,” she said. “Wouldn’t surprise me if she broke down and did something about it.”
“Like what? You don’t mean something violent?”
“There are other options, Lucille, that are less … drastic.” Thelma shrugged. “Maybe she’ll leave him.”
“Did she say that?”
“Not to me. But something’s weighing on her mind.” Thelma jumped up and bustled over to the glass-fronted cabinet where she kept the bakery items. She picked up a white towel and began rubbing imaginary spots on the glass. “I think she’s found somebody new herself.”
I heard the catch in her throat, a tiny quiver. Then the room grew quiet, except for the rushing sound of the air-conditioning system and an indistinct squawking from the television in the back room. I held my cup with both hands and rocked in my chair, taking in what she’d just said. The old wood creaked, sounding like a baby animal crying. I stopped rocking.
“I heard she and your grandfather are very old and special friends,” she said in a sad, quiet voice. “That she knew Luc’s wife, your grandmother, way back when in Paris.”
“Yes,” I said, “that’s true.”
It was an open secret that Thelma had a mad crush on Pépé. The likelihood of them ever getting together was about the same as the sun colliding with the moon, but my gallant grandfather had taken her to dinner at the Inn the last time he was in town, charming her with the European politesse and old-fashioned chivalry he showed every woman, being especially kind to a lonely spinster whose relationships with men had always ended in heartbreak and disaster, until she finally found vicarious comfort in her soap opera hunks.
“Well, he is available,” she said. “And he’s quite a catch.”
“My grandfather is an honorable man. She’s a married woman.”
“There’s a remedy for that, child. It’s called divorce,” she said. “And who could blame Juliette what with Charles having lovers coming and going all the time?”
“I think you’re wrong, Thelma. Pépé’s one great love was my grandmother. That’s why he never remarried. And I don’t think he ever will.”
“Someday when you’re my age,” she said, “you’ll realize that just simple companionship is more than enough. They could still be together and he wouldn’t have to marry her. She never gave up her French citizenship, so she could go back and live there easy as you please.”
I finished my coffee and stood up. I didn’t want to think about the consequences of what she was saying. Pépé cared for Juliette, that I knew. And, okay, Juliette was a little in love with my grandfather. But what Thelma was implying, that there was some romantic liaison between them that went beyond the very proper behavior I’d witnessed at their party last week, was ridiculous—had I been that blind?
“What do you need, child?” Thelma took my coffee cup and put it in the trash.
I needed to think she was wrong, that her theory was way off base. “Pardon?”
“Besides the muffins. You said you needed a few things.”
“Oh. Milk, bread, peanut butter.”
She wrapped my muffins while I got the items and paid her.
“My grandfather respects Juliette as an old and dear friend,” I said as she walked me to the door. “He’s fond of her, but not in the way you think.”
Thelma’s smile was tinged with sympathy and regret. “You’re his granddaughter. The man’s been alone for more than thirty years. Let me tell you something, Lucille. Juliette Thiessman is a strong-willed woman. If she wants your grandfather, she’ll get him. You can bet the farm on that.”
She adjusted her glasses, blinking hard, and I couldn’t tell if she was holding back tears. Then she squared her shoulders and patted my arm. “I do run on sometimes, don’t I?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Anyway, I guess it’s not up to either one of us what they do, is it?”
“Nope.” She glanced at her watch, back to her old brisk self. “Lordy, will you look at the time? I’m missing Tomorrow Ever After. I just love that show. The people are just so real, you know? And Shay’s about to propose to Amber.”
“Oh, gosh. You don’t want to miss that.”
“Oh, honey, it’s television. This is July. They won’t finish their candlelight dinner on his yacht until sometime in August. Then he’ll take her to his bedroom.”
“Then he asks her?”
“No. They’ll argue—she’s very temperamental—and carry on until she finally tells him she’s pregnant. He’ll pop the question by Labor Day.”
I grinned. “You’d better get back so you don’t miss any of it.”
“I just love Shay,” she said. “He deserves better than Amber. It’s not his baby, you see. But he’s an honorable man and he’ll take care of her because he’s a gentleman. Toodle-oo, Lucille.”
The sleigh bells rang as I closed the door. An honorable man and a gentleman: Had she been talking about Shay or my grandfather?
My phone rang as I was putting the groceries in the Mini.
“Hey,” Kit said. “Pay dirt.”
“You found something in the archives?” I felt breathless. “Maggie’s accident?”
“Sorry, not that. And definitely nothing about Stephen Falcone going missing.”
“Then what?”
“I got to thinking about his sister, since you said he might have lived locally. Call me lazy, but I took the easy route after I couldn’t find anything right away in the archives. I looked up Elinor Falcone on the Internet phone number lookup site. It’s an unusual name.”
“And?”
“Got a pencil or pen?”
“Give me a second.” I fumbled in my purse as my heart pounded against my ribs. “Okay, shoot.”
“There’s an Elinor Falcone, age sounds about right, still living in D.C. Brookland, to be precise. Maybe you want to go pay her a visit?” She gave me the address and phone number.
I looked at my watch. “I can be there in about an hour.”