Murder at the Blue Plate Café (A Blue Plate Café Mystery) (9 page)

The next day I left
Marj
to take care of things and drove first to see the house Donna and Irv would remodel. It was a large, two-story red brick on the far edge of town, still almost in the country with a pasture to the east and a grove of trees across the street. Probably once it had been the substantial home of a prosperous farmer and sat right in the middle of his farm until the town grew toward it. I saw at once that it could be charming. It had a wonderful wrap-around porch, though it was unroofed, and lots and lots of windows. The windows on the front and the front door were arched, with patterned brick around them. I parked in the driveway and walked up to peek in the front windows, at which point I was more impressed. The inside was a mess but the bones of this house were good—wood floors that cried out to be refinished, arched doorways, some French doors. I walked around the outside, admiring the huge old trees. In the back, I could see an abandoned garden—roses, probably—and a fenced off place where a farmer’s wife had grown vegetables in the summer. There was a small barn—it could probably be renovated into a garage—and a couple of other outbuildings. But the whole place had an air of neglect as though someone had just turned the key and left—or had they? I went up some fairly rickety back stairs, turned the knob and found myself in a small mud room that led to a good-sized but hopeless kitchen. For anyone to live there today, it would have to be gutted, although I’d save the old gas stove to use as a planter or something out back—it had great charm.

I wandered through the downstairs rooms—spacious, light and airy, with a dirty but lovely chandelier in the middle of the dining room. Rat dropping, dirt, and dust were everywhere, and a couple of broken windows let in the summer heat. It was surprising no local kids had broken in to use it for beer parties or a love nest or who knows what. The whole place gave me the creeps, like I was walking on someone’s grave. And I had the eerie sensation that someone was watching me.

Aloud as though to reassure myself I said, “Nonsense, Kate Chambers. You don’t believe in ghosts.” And then I echoed Gram’s words, “I’m the sensible one.” On the other hand, if I didn’t believe in ghosts, why was I listening to Gram all the time and sometimes talking back to her?

Suddenly I couldn’t get out of that house fast enough. I went out the way I had come in and practically ran to my car, which I’d left in the driveway. There was a nondescript gray car parked at the curb—had it been there when I pulled up? I didn’t think so. I had my hand on the car door, ready to yank it open, when a voice startled me. “Morning, Miss Kate.”

Irv
Litman
had come silently up behind me, dressed once again in crisp jeans and a work shirt. He didn’t look particularly menacing, but I was acutely aware that I was alone with a man I knew zilch about. And I’d left my phone in the car.

“You followed me here!” It was a straightforward accusation.

He threw up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “No harm intended. I just saw you headed toward the big house and followed out of curiosity. What do you think of our property?”

There it was again. The plural possessive pronoun. “I think it has potential,” I said. The house could be charming….”

He interrupted to say, “I intend it to be.”

Good Lord! Was Gram channeling him too?

Then I knew better. “You could be part of this project, you know,” he said, reaching out to touch my arm. “Would you like to see the inside of the house?”

I definitely did
not
want to go into that house with Irv
Litman
. I glanced at my watch, and then said, “Good Lord! I didn’t realize how late it is. I’d love to see the house, but I have to get back to the café.”

He shrugged. “We’ll have other opportunities,” he said enigmatically.

I turned but he opened the car door like a gentleman before I could reach for it, and then patted my arm again. “I like you, Miss Kate Chambers.”

Mumbling thanks, I slammed the door and peeled out of there so fast my tires squealed. I think, when I looked back in the rear view mirror, he was laughing. From that day forward, I would never trust Irv
Litman
again.

By the time I got to the main highway, I had slowed enough to keep the speed limit, and after I parked behind Gram’s house, I sat and thought for a minute. Too much was happening—Donna and Irv and the B & B stuff, the destruction of Steve
Millican’s
nursery. How did Gram’s death fit into all this? Or did it?

“Gram,” I said aloud, “help me figure this out.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious,” Gram commented, and I could hear a wry tone in her voice. “He’s up to no good. You have to warn Donna.”

Thanks, Gram. That was really helpful
. I thought about calling Rick Samuels to tell him I’d felt in danger, but all I could really complain about was that Irv
Litman
had made a move on me. Yuck!

The next morning when the café was quiet, I slipped over to Donna’s house—the weather was heating up and I confess I drove. Pulled in around back and let myself into the kitchen, only to find Donna knee-deep in sauce pans and containers of salt, flour, sticks of butter, sliced mushrooms, an open bottle of wine—at ten in the morning?—and a general mess, with the sink piled high.

“What in holy Ned are you making?” I asked.

“I think it’s called Coquille Saint Jacques.”

I worked hard to keep from giggling at her French pronunciation. “Scallops with white wine and mushroom sauce. A real gourmet dish, Don.” I hadn’t called her that since we were kids. “What’s the occasion? Did I miss Tom’s birthday? Your anniversary?” That was it—anniversary, and this was June. I wracked my brain to think what day they’d married, but I could barely think of this day’s date.

She ran a hand across her sweaty forehead and then wiped it on her apron. “I’m practicing for the B & B, for when I start serving dinners.”

“And you plan to serve Coquille St. Jacques? Don, people who come to the cabins are there for a rustic experience—if they want food, they won’t want sophisticated French. They’ll want down home East Texas cooking like we serve in the café.”

She sank down on a stool, silent for a moment, as though thinking. “Kate, I think you’re right. And you’ve just suggested the solution. We can order dinners from the café for the guests.”

Hmm. I think my sister just hit on a good idea. “Okay. It’s a deal. I’ll choose a meal of the day for the B & B.” I couldn’t resist adding, “When the time comes.”

Donna looked around the kitchen. “Now what do I do with this mess?” she wailed. “I am completely bewildered by this recipe.”

And that’s how I ended up making Coquille Saint Jacques in my sister’s kitchen on a Thursday morning. I had to throw out some of her sauce and start over, but a little over an hour later, I had a terrific dish ready to pop in the oven. “Just put it in at 350 for 30 minutes before Tom comes home. He’ll walk in to smell a heavenly aroma.”

“Are you kidding? He hates seafood. He won’t eat it.”

Why, I wondered, had I gone to all this trouble? “Mind if I take it home?”

“Please do.”

While I had been cooking, I asked Donna casually how she’d met Irv. Her response startled me, though I guess given my reputation, it shouldn’t have.

“He came into Tom’s store, and I happened to meet him. But we really met a month or so later when I was in a bar in Dallas. I’d spent the day in the city looking at samples and swatches, and I stopped for a glass of wine before the drive home.”

Okay, if she’d only had one glass.

“He was alone, asked if he could join me, and we got to talking. He told me about himself, and I told him I was a bored housewife. It just kind of went from there.”

I didn’t exactly want to ask what went where, so I said, “You mean your business partnership?”

“And friendship,” she said. “He’s a really good friend.”

I wasn’t going to explore that. After all, I knew men I considered really good friends. One of them, Steve
Millican
, would probably get Coquille Saint Jacques for dinner tonight if he wanted it.

But it was clear to me that Donna hadn’t just met Irv
Litman
last week or even last month. “Did you meet him before Gram died?”

My back was to her but all I heard was silence. I turned around to see her biting her lip and nodding her head in the affirmative.

“Did you ever introduce him to Gram?”

Negative shake. “He never came to Wheeler until last week. We always met in Dallas.”

I began to get the picture. In crude terms, huckster meets bored housewife, wines and dines her (my mind wouldn’t go any farther than that), learns she has inherited a good-sized amount of money, and moves into the picture.

“Has Tom met him?”

“Yeah. He didn’t much like him. I’m not sure why.”

Hell-O, Donna! Wake up and see the world.
I changed the subject. “Uh, I went to look at the house….” I barely began, before she interrupted me.

“I so want to do the B & B….”

I wanted to ask more—what she knew about Irv, how often she saw him, and of course “the question” about an affair, but I was in waters over my head. I packed up the fancy scallops, told her how good it was to visit, and beat it back to the restaurant.

When the afternoon lull came, I sat at my desk and stared into space. So much confusion and now Irv
Litman
was really muddying the waters. I needed to know more about him. Certainly, I had nothing to take to Rick Samuels. He might agree about my suspicions that Donna was being duped, but there was no broken law involved. Google is often my answer to everything, so not expecting much I searched for Irv
Litman
, Dallas.

Bingo! The first hit was for Irv
Litman
, a financial planner in Dallas. Sure enough, the Web site had a picture of “Donna’s” Irv looking his most charming. He listed himself as a Certified Financial Planner and a member of the Financial Planning Association. So far, legit. The services he listed included investment management, estate planning, insurance planning, and tax planning. I wished he listed clients, but I suppose that would be unethical. His offices were apparently somewhere in the Highland Park area—not a bad place to be. It occurred to me that Donna had known Irv
Litman
a lot longer than I thought—and well before the brake line to my car was punctured. There was another place in my mind I just didn’t want to go, but I never could believe Rob had done that. Still, I couldn’t imagine Irv
Litman
crawling under a car.

I told
Marj
I’d be out for a while. I thought between them Benny and Nora had dinner under control. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was four o’clock, and I said, “I may not come back until we close, unless you call and say you need me.” I grabbed a baggie full of salad makings and a take-out container of mashed potatoes for two.

Marj
shooed me out the door, and I ran home to call Cindy before she left her office and headed for the evening’s party. I didn’t even feel bad that I was missing whatever party there was—that life seemed remote, far away and long ago.

Cindy must have looked at caller ID, because she answered, “You need something, don’t you?”

Incensed, I said I didn’t only call her when I needed something, but she pointed out I hadn’t called since I’d returned to Wheeler. I pointed out it’s a two-way street but then rushed on, “Yeah, I do want something. I want you to check someone out for me.”

“
Oooh
,” she squealed. “I always wanted to be a detective. Tell me about it. Is that Rob guy still bothering you?”

“No, let me explain.” I think she expected I wanted evidence for someone’s divorce, because when I finished she sounded distinctly let down. “A financial planner? You want me to check him out? I haven’t even got any finances to plan, except paycheck to paycheck.”

“But you have a good imagination, don’t you? And you can act. I know you can. Pretend you just inherited a lot of money and you have no idea what to do with it, poor little you. But be sure to ask for references, especially from lawyers and banks.”

She agreed to call him the next day, asking, “What’s my pay?”

“Free lunch at the Blue Plate Café.”

“Oh, swell, where I’ll probably run into this
Litman
guy.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, as Gram used to say.”

We hung up, and I swiped a brush at my hair, dabbed on a bit of lipstick, and crossed the highway to the nursery. The lattice front had been replaced, and as I peeked around I saw that order was almost restored, though the stock of plants was down considerably. Steve was working at his potting bench and turned when I called out, “Are you accepting visitors.”