Death Dangles a Participle (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series) (3 page)

“I think it’s a great idea,” I said.

She was wearing smart, low-heeled leather boots and pulling on a red wool coat with black velvet tabs at the collar. It was a radical departure from her ubiquitous old green and yellow parka. She grinned at Gil’s surprised expression while pulling on sleek black leather gloves.

“Been shopping. Etienne says I need to look kind of executive.”

Gil toasted her with his cup. “You’re CEO material, Marie.”

She dimpled and blushed.

While sipping Hester’s excellent coffee, I skimmed the document and proudly

signed:
Amelia Prentice Dickensen
. My new name.

“Thanks.” Marie snatched up the paper and headed out the back door. “I’ll be right back.”

Hester poured more coffee all around and joined us at the kitchen table. “This job’s been the saving of her,” she told us, nodding toward the door Marie had used. “You saw her, Amelia, after Marguerite died, all kind of fading away. She’d been living for that girl, and when the kid died, well, she was going down for the third time, you might say.”

Hester had been Marie’s next-door-neighbor before Marie and Etienne moved into the new downstairs suite at Chez Prentice. “But you come along and needed her help, you see. And you’d been sweet to her girl. She told me.”

“But what about Etienne?” Gil asked as he smeared more apple butter on a remaining morsel of croissant, “Didn’t he help Marie too?” He popped it in his mouth and chewed happily.

“That was Father Frontenac’s doing. He told Etienne not to show himself till later, you see? It was good he waited, you ask me. She wouldn’t’ve ever been able to kiss and make up, all weak like she was at first.”

Hester knocked on the table to drive her point home, then sat back to let her words sink in. She took a big swig of coffee.

“Hester, you’re a natural psychologist,” said Gil, and turned his high wattage smile on her.

It was his secret weapon. Until recently, it had had the power to render my own respiratory system temporarily unreliable. A concentrated honeymoon dose had given me a certain tolerance.

Hester simpered. “Well, I dunno about that.” She popped up from the table and looked around vaguely. “Excuse me. Laundry. Gotta go fold some towels.” She scurried away, so flustered she left her half-finished coffee behind.

During most of the lifetime I’d known Gil, I’d refused to let myself admit how attractive he was. The evidence had been there all the time: thick, wavy hair (now steel gray), warm hazel-brown eyes, expressive black eyebrows and blitzkrieg smile. There was also the solid-but-not-fat physique and a tiny dimple near his chin, but it was the smile that could do the most widespread damage. Best of all, I didn’t think Gil was completely aware of the power he possessed.

“Any coffee left?”

A white-haired, plump woman peeked in through the kitchen door. She introduced herself: Mrs. Felicity Daye from Toledo, Ohio. Her husband would have come, she said, but he was busy working.

She had relatives in the area, she said, and added, “But I don’t want to be a bother, so I decided to stay here.”

“That’s what Chez Prentice is here for! Come on in. Have a seat.” Gil rose to place his empty plate in the sink, “There’s plenty of coffee left. And it’s fresh. Be sure to have a roll with some of that great homemade apple butter.”

“Want to run around the block and see the Widow Burns?” he asked as we left through the old familiar front door.

Lily’s house stood back-to-back with Chez Prentice.

“I don’t think so, Gil. She’s probably furious with me.”

He frowned. “She’s got no reason to be. You told her the truth.”

“Maybe, but the truth wasn’t what she wanted to hear. And I
was
pretty rough on her.”

“Give it time, Amelia.” Gil put his arm around my waist. “You two have been friends forever. She’ll come around. I did, didn’t I?” He kissed my cheek quickly. “Woof! It’s cold out here! Come on; let’s go home. I want to carry you over that threshold before I lose my nerve.”

It was seven miles from town to our lakeside cottage.

“Okay, sweetheart,” Gil said when we reached the front porch, bending over to hook an arm under my knees. “Up you go!”

I backed away. “Gil, we can’t do this. There’s ice on the porch. Look.”

“Hmmm.” He stroked an ear thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re right; it might be risky.” He pulled me close and looked down into my eyes. “Think you could give me a rain check?”

“I’ll remind you when the weather gets better,” I said, smiling sweetly and vowing inwardly to do no such thing, ever
.
We were both in our forties, and I intended to keep this man in working order as long as humanly possible.

Gil unlocked the door and we carried in our luggage. The interior was surprisingly well ordered, considering that Gil’s nephew, Vern Thomas, graduate student and known slob, had taken up residence in our spare room.

I dropped my bags and looked around. It was truly neat, with not so much as a sock hanging over a doorknob. I sighed happily. It was good to be home, in my House.

Chez Prentice, where I had been raised, was a twelve-room Victorian as luxuriously appointed as my old and moderately well-to-do family could make it. Every room was furnished in the tastes of my forebears, from the hand-painted framed prints out of
Godey’s Ladies’ Book
in the entrance hall to the delicate china shepherd and shepherdess on the mantelpiece in the parlor.

While I’d loved my family and still cherished the things that had once been theirs, they had never been truly mine. It was more in the spirit of loving duty than genuine enthusiasm that for most of my adult life I’d played curator of what had virtually become a family museum. I had assumed I’d live and eventually die at Chez Prentice.

Until the day I saw this House.

From the moment I stepped into the roughly paneled hall and beheld the deer head with the quizzical expression, the lumpy fieldstone fireplace with the carved wooden plaque reading “1890,” and the screened porch that overlooked Lake Champlain, I knew I had finally come home.

Papa, who’d owned a lumberyard and knew good building techniques when he saw them, would have been surprised, maybe even aghast, at my choice of a house. The place was drafty and jerrybuilt, with odd rooms added to the original cabin as necessity had dictated. The kindest term one could use to describe the plumbing would be eccentric. The fact that the kitchen had been remodeled only served to point out the shortcomings of the other rooms.

Things weren’t much better outside. The cedar shakes that covered the exterior made the little three-bedroom house a potential firetrap, and it took ages to get to town by means of a twisty two-lane road.

Still, this place spoke to me of peace and welcome in a way Chez Prentice never had. While it had taken Gil and me twenty-plus years to finally realize we were meant for each other, it had taken House and me only five minutes.

“Hello, House,” I purred, “I’m home.”

“Oh, no, not that House thing again,” said Gil, dragging my largest suitcase down the single step into our icy master bedroom. “You’re getting weird on me, you know that?”

“Be afraid, be verrry afraid,” I intoned, quoting one of my students quoting movie dialogue. I waggled my fingers menacingly at him.

Gil grinned. “Come over here and say that again.”

I did.

There was a knock on the door. We sprang apart guiltily, then laughed.

“Caught—like a couple of randy teenagers,” Gil said.

“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?” I had once used that expression to describe him.

“You got that right,” he said, bounding to the front door and opening it. “Vern! Did you forget your key again?”

Ignoring his uncle entirely, Vern took three huge paces into the house and swept me off my feet in an engulfing hug. His khaki parka was still cold from the outside.

“Auntie Amelia! You’re back at last!” Grinning, he snatched off his watch cap, set me down, and planted a wet and noisy kiss on my cheek.

Turning to Gil, he stroked him repeatedly on the top of his head and said, in a tone one uses to address a dog, “Good uncle, good uncle! I wanted an aunt for Christmas and you got me one!”

Gil rolled his eyes tolerantly.

Vern really was a dear.

“You’ve cut your hair,” I observed.

His blond mop was now a severe crew cut with closely shaved sides. He turned his head both ways for my inspection. His cheeks and the edges of his ears were cherry red from the cold.

“What d’you think?”

“A drastic change, but it suits you; very masculine.”

His eyes swept the room. “I cleaned up. Did ya notice?”

“I did, indeed.”

“I even vacuumed that deer head.” He pointed backwards, over his shoulder in the direction of the entry way. “Got a new job too. That is, another one.” Vern drove a taxi part time. “I’m tutoring kids at the high school. That makes me kind of a teacher now. We’ll be colleagues.”

“I’d like that.”

We stood smiling at one another for some seconds before the ringing of the telephone broke our concentration.

Vern sprang into action. “I’ll get it.” A dramatic vault over the back of the sofa and two long strides later, he had the receiver in hand. He handed it to Gil.

“It’s Wendy at the paper. She says it’s important.”

Gil retired with the phone to a corner of the room while Vern took me on a proud tour of the cleaning job he had done. At his insistence, I was beholding the relatively immaculate kitchen sink when Gil joined us.

He replaced the phone on its cradle. “Sorry, I’ve got to run. They found somebody dead on the lake.”

“Golly! Was it some kind of accident? Who is it?” Vern asked.

“Don’t know yet.” Gil pulled his coat on. “You know all I do at this point. When I get more, you can read about it in the paper.” He grinned. “‘Bye.” He planted a quick kiss on my cheek and headed out the door.

“Well, so much for the honeymoon,” Vern said and grinned.

“Right.” I closed the refrigerator door. “You’ve done a great job here—”

The telephone rang again. Vern’s long arm grabbed the receiver effortlessly. “Yah? Oh, hi! Okay. Yeah, she’s here. It’s Alec.”

“Miss Amelia, ’tis good to hear your lovely voice again,” Professor Alexander Alexander began in that elusive Scots accent.

“It’s good to hear yours too, Alec. How are you doing?”

He detected the tone of sympathy in my voice and tried immediately to dispel it. “Never better! Busy as ever!”

“And the monster?” Alec’s scientific
raison d’être
involved a hunt for a Loch Ness-style creature, believed to inhabit the depths of Lake Champlain.

“Capital. I’m getting closer all the time. I’m organizing a new network of observers. But that’s not my reason for calling. I have a wee favor to ask of you.”

“Anything.”

“Would you keep an eye on Miss Lily for me?”

His voice, so hearty a second before, was now low and hoarse. I could picture him sinking his chin into his spade-shaped, salt-and-pepper beard.

“I expect you’ve heard we’re no longer an item—“

“So it’s definitely over? No chance of reconciliation?”

“None, but I do still wish her well. She’s such an impulsive little creature. Could you talk to her, Amelia? Keep her from making some kind of silly mistake on the rebound, as it were. She listens to you.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Oh, aye, she does. Would you speak with her?”

“I’ll try, but you know I can’t make any promises.”

The picture he painted of Lily was idealistic in the extreme. The last time she’d actually taken my advice was back in high school, when I suggested she use wide-ruled notebook paper.

His voice immediately became stronger. “That’s all I can ask. Now, put me back on with the boy. We’ve the ice festival to discuss.”

I gave the phone over to Vern and retired to my bedroom to begin unpacking, then remembered something.

“Where’s Sam?” Samuel de Champlain, my late mother’s moody, obese old cat was just about the only thing I’d taken away from Chez Prentice when we married. “Not outside, I hope.”

I checked the screen porch. Sam watched birds the way Vern watched college football games on television: supine, but vocal. No luck on the porch, just fuzzy patches on the indoor-outdoor carpeting where Sam liked to sharpen his claws. I scanned the snow-covered yard for cat footprints; there was nothing but smooth, pristine whiteness.

I knocked on the door of Vern’s room and secured his yelled permission to enter.

“My goodness!” I gasped. Vern had cleaned the house, all right, but his own room was quite another matter.

Seated at his glowing computer screen and talking to Alec on an earphone telephone, he answered my question with a shrug and a sweep of the hand that took in a sea of wrinkled clothes, dirty coffee cups, crumpled papers, and textbooks. “He might be here somewhere. He hangs out here sometimes. I’ll let you know if he turns up,” he assured me, then returned to his telephone conversation.

As I navigated gingerly around a pair of gargantuan sneakers and out the door, he added, “He’s around. Don’t worry.”

Vern was probably right, of course, but guilt is a powerful motivator. I’d never liked this cat very much, and because of that, I’d taken my inherited role as his caretaker very seriously.

“Sam?” I called into the pantry, and then the warm spot behind the clothes dryer. No answer.

Gil returned home around eight o’clock and ducked all our questions about the death on the lake. “Got to confirm our facts first,” was all he’d tell us.

“Maybe Sam’s hiding. You said he used to hide back at Chez Prentice,” he speculated when I fretted about my missing cat at dinner. “Just put some leftovers in his bowl, and he’ll turn up.”

“Good idea,” I agreed, remembering the way Sam could disappear at will, only to rematerialize at the first rattle of food hitting his bowl.

But even canned tuna failed to work its fragrant magic, and when Vern came in from emptying the trash after dinner that evening, the expression on his face was grave.