Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Adieu, adieu—I fly, adieu,
I vanish in the heaven’s blue—
Adieu, adieu!
~ John Keats, “Fairy Song”
SATURDAY MORNING JOSS AND I prettified the main showroom by adding more sprigs of holly, scented candles, and merry-sounding jingle bells. I also brewed a large pot of hot spiced tea, which was a favorite during the holidays.
Then we attended to the patio where the book club tea would take place.
On each table, Joss set a palette of paint brushes and paints, around which I arranged the party favors of bisque fairy figurines and holiday bells.
When I completed my task, I positioned copies of Wreath Between the Lines on each table in case someone had forgotten to bring a copy and wished to review the book during the discussion.
At noon Meaghan arrived with her Celtic lever harp in tow.
She blew me a kiss, went to the patio to set up in the far corner by the acrylic podium, and swung back to me.
“FYI, I didn’t learn diddly from Red except he’s focused on the same three suspects you are, Horace Elias, Shara Popple, and Ferguson Moss.
But you know him, he can be as tight-lipped as his boss.
However, I did fill him in on everything you’ve shared with me. ”
“Good. All I care about is him being openminded.”
At one p.m. customers with reservations for the tea started to arrive. Many knew the drill and headed for the patio. Meaghan was already playing her harp. Later she would perform the song Lissa had requested while Yvanna poured tea and distributed tasty goodies.
Shara Popple sauntered into the shop and made a beeline for the patio.
Though I was surprised to see her—she hadn’t signed up for the event—I acknowledged her with a nod before returning my attention to the customer I was ringing up, a barista who worked at Percolate, one of my favorite places in town to go for coffee.
I often described the young woman as having frayed edges—wiry hair, twitchy mouth, and dry blinking eyes.
“I love this place,” she gushed. “Love, love, love it.”
“I’m so glad,” I said as I packed up the two hundred dollars’ worth of goods she’d purchased.
Shara strode to the patio and veered right. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her checking out the bakers’ racks. We had added dirt to the hole beneath the rightmost one and finished it with travertine tile and grout.
“By the way,” the customer said, lowering her voice, “I hear you had a quibble with my neighbor, Ferguson Moss.”
“A quibble?” I placed the box of chimes she’d bought at the bottom of one of the shop’s tote bags and topped it with a floral tea set encased in bubble wrap.
“He can be an obnoxious boob, him and his snails.” The woman sniffed. “But I did see him the night the thing happened here.”
The thing, meaning the break-in and murder. “You did?”
“Yes, yes, and I heard him, too. I had the windows open. I know it’s brisk nowadays, but I adore fresh air. Adore, adore, adore it.” She shivered with delight. “He mutters.”
“Ferguson?”
“Mm-hmm. All the time. Like I do when I talk to my plants to encourage them to grow.”
If this woman was to be believed, and I had no reason to doubt her, her account cleared Ferguson of murder.
“Do you converse with your fairy?” She glanced around the showroom and back at me.
“I do.”
“I hope to see one someday.” When I handed her the bag with the items, she beamed. “Maybe these will bring me good luck. Good, good, good luck.”
At one thirty nearly all the book club tea attendees had arrived. I moved to the French doors and leaned against the jamb to observe the crowd.
Lissa Reade was chatting with a few. Yvanna was touring the patio with her dessert trolley.
At each table, she poured tea and delivered communal plates of peppermint cookies, iced snowmen cookies, and slices of chocolate yule log.
I’d thought about adding the mincemeat-marzipan buns or Idris’s scrumptious cranberry tarts to our menu, but had decided against both. Three choices were ample.
Fiona was flitting above everyone’s heads. Pixie, who enjoyed attending the teas, had taken up residence on the ledge of the fountain. She wasn’t being aloof. She would allow someone to pet her. But she preferred the higher view. Less chance of being trampled.
Horace Elias was sitting at a table with Glinda and her niece, a tennis phenom and devoted fairy garden fan.
The niece laughed at something Horace said.
Glinda playfully swatted Horace’s arm. She wasn’t flirting.
She had recently fallen in love with a jewelry designer.
But she was a consummate hostess. I wondered if she was pelting Horace with questions about his whereabouts Wednesday night.
Given his relaxed demeanor, Horace didn’t seem to be guilty of murder.
My hygienist, who had been coming to the teas ever since they began, was seated at a table with three members of the Happy Diggers garden club.
Idris Gentry and Shara Popple were seated at another table engaged in conversation, looking like they were old friends. Perhaps they had become acquainted at Sweet Treats.
Joss sidled to me. “Did you invite Shara? She didn’t RSVP.”
“It’s okay.”
“Why do you think she’s here?”
“I’m not sure. I’m not picking up a hostile vibe.”
Lissa clapped her hands. “Everyone, let’s sit and we’ll get started.”
All our book clubs began in the same manner. Lissa summarized the story, and then she posed questions about the protagonist, the basic set-up, and the time of year. The story had been set near Christmas.
Her fifth question was unsettling. “How did you feel about the victim being strangled with Christmas lights? Was it too graphic?”
The frayed edges barista snorted. “It was a fun way to use them. Me? I can never, never, never get the knots out of them, which makes me want to strangle the manufacturers. Strangle them!” she repeated, which elicited laughter from the others.
“And, spoiler alert,” Lissa went on, “how did you feel about Jake not knowing he had a granddaughter?”
Glinda’s niece raised her hand. “It was so sad. I can’t imagine not knowing my grandpa.”
“I can’t imagine not recognizing my own child,” my hygienist quipped. “My twins are so alike. Their noses. Their eyes. It’s a genetic thing. You can’t mistake it. But I can see how it worked in the story.”
I thought about the Tillburys. Would a descendant of Daniel’s possess similar traits to one of Dexter’s even after four or more generations?
“Courtney, dear,” said my neighbor Holly Hopewell as she passed through the French doors on the way to the restroom. “Painting our own Christmas ornaments is so much fun.” She was a fantastic artist in her own right and had taught my mother how to paint. “A brushstroke here, a brushstroke there.”
She departed, and a theory blossomed in my mind. My gaze swung from the bisque items, to the iced snowmen cookies, to the paintbrushes. Had the killer used a paintbrush to apply cyanide to a single cookie?
I flashed on the pastry brushes stowed in Idris’s Sweet Treats apron, and another notion struck me. Thessalonia Tillbury had been a baker. So had Reenie Tillbury. Was it possible Idris was a Tillbury?
Holly returned from the restroom and chimed again, “This is so much fun!”
Fiona flitted to me and extended her arms. “This is so much fun!”
The mimicry jolted me, and two images flicked in my mind.
It’s my destiny, Tianna had said, making a spread-armed gesture.
Stretching gets rid of the tension, Idris had crooned at the bakery, while extending her arms.
In a matter of seconds, everything came together, and I understood why the rainbow-colored envelope I’d noticed in Idris’s purse at Hideaway Café had looked so familiar.
It was a Past Perfect DNA kit result envelope.
The company advertised in magazines and mailers and at the opening of YouTube videos.
Had Idris been investigating her lineage?
Why? Had she thought her parents were lying to her about her birth?
A DNA test would prove if they weren’t. It could also reveal whether or not she was a descendant of the Tillbury family.
Another possibility came to mind. What if Daniel was the one who’d buried a treasure on the property and had planned to recover it when he was released from prison?
What if, just in case something happened to him, he gave his daughter Reenie a document showing her where it was hidden, but when she put her daughter Daniella up for adoption, she bestowed the document upon her as a keepsake, a treasure for her to discover when she was ready?
What if Daniella never opened it and, subsequently, the document was passed down for generations?
I pictured Idris’s parents giving her the document on her eighteenth or twenty-first birthday.
Unlike those before her, she opened it. The gift spurred her to discover more about her heritage.
When she learned of Tianna’s existence in Carmel, she flew across the country to meet her.
Though the genetic likenesses would have dissipated over time and the two women were not identical by any stretch of the imagination, when she met Tianna she would’ve seen what I now realized.
They had the same hair color. The same pert noses.
The same dulcet voices. And their idiosyncratic physical gestures matched, as well.
Idris contacted Tianna, who, as guileless as she was, embraced the truth with open arms. Being a trusting soul, she revealed she had a treasure map showing where the fortune was buried.
Idris, stunned by her cousin’s honesty yet driven by greed because she, Idris, hadn’t had the luxuries afforded Tianna, warned her cousin she wouldn’t have any rights to the treasure if she took the legal route.
She assured Tianna that the current property owner would thwart her.
Therefore, the only way they could take possession was to dig it up themselves.
Idris convinced Tianna she would find a way into Open Your Imagination, and they set a date.
That explained a detail that had been gnawing at me.
Logan said he’d recently crossed the courtyard to Sweet Treats and had returned to find his door ajar.
What if, while he was in line to purchase a donut, Idris took a break, stole to his shop, made a copy of the duplicate key to Open Your Imagination by pressing it into a wad of dough like the ones she’d been preparing for the miniature tarts, and raced back to the bakery with a perfect impression, able to make a copy with no one the wiser?
Fiona flapped double-time. “Courtney, what’s wrong? Your forehead is . . .” She squinched hers.
I filled her in on my musings. “They agreed to meet at the shop. When Tianna arrived at Open Your Imagination and saw the hole Idris had dug, she bent down, immediately enthralled, and touched the dirt. Idris urged her to stand and handed her a celebratory cookie. Tianna took a bite—”
“And died.”
I nodded. “After which, Idris hurried away with whatever she’d found.”
“As Sherlock Holmes would say, ‘When you’ve eliminated the impossible . . .’” Fiona mimed her head exploding.
Idris caught me staring at her and raised an eyebrow. I hitched my chin, inviting her to have a chat. There were people around. It was safe. But she didn’t budge.
Even though I had nothing but speculation to give Officer Reddick, I texted him. I asked him to come to the shop. We could confront her together.
He didn’t respond.