If Catfish Had Nine Lives (Country Cooking School Mystery) (13 page)

“Thanks for telling me that, Orly.”

“My pleasure.”

“What can I get for y’all?” Bunny asked as she approached. She seemed less baffled by our bigger table request since Orly had joined us.

We ordered and tried to talk about more pleasant things as we ate. I didn’t ask any other questions. I’d look for the opportunity to find some answers this evening.

Shortly after our food was delivered, Jerome disappeared, saying that he was going to go look for Astin’s remains before meeting us that evening at the campsite. After he left, it was difficult not to see myself as the third wheel, because I had a distinct feeling that Orly became extra attentive to Gram, and it seemed she was okay with it. I wished I could squeeze in a question about Jezzie, but not only did it seem inappropriate but I might actually ruin Gram’s mood. I figured I’d done that enough for one meal, so I kept the question filed away for later.

• • •

“Theodore William Winston, how in tarnation are you not in the hospital?” Gram said as she leaned down and placed her finger gently under his chin.

“I’m okay, Gram,” he said, but his eyes shifted in my direction. He wanted my help, but I figured we were now way beyond getting out of this unscathed.

Gram stood and looked at me. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Do your parents know?”

I looked at Teddy. He shook his head.

“No, Gram, but it looks much worse than it is,” I lied. “Teddy’s fine.” He was, but it was still bad. “We thought that if the bruises and swelling could go down first, you and Mom and Dad wouldn’t have to worry.”

“Oh, Betts, cut the crap. You just didn’t want to be the one to tell us that Teddy was hurt.”

I sat on the couch next to my brother. “Yeah, well, there is that.”

Gram sat on Teddy’s other side and sighed.

“Oh, hell, I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell anyone about this. I understand, but I’m just worried, that’s all. Are you sure you shouldn’t be being monitored or something?” Gram said.

“Doc said I’d be fine recovering at home. I’m feeling better, really. I know I still look bad, but my headache is mostly gone and I’m not dizzy anymore. Man, was I dizzy.”

I hoped he’d stop there.

“The man who was killed was the person who did this to you?” Gram said, asking the question based upon the bits of information I’d given her on the way over to Teddy’s.

“I’m not sure . . . I think so. My last memory is that I was going with him, but some other things are coming back to me.”

“What?” I said.

“Noises . . . no,
sounds
are coming back, not
noises
. Actually, to be more specific, I think other voices are coming back. I think that while I was being beaten, I heard other voices. Guys and girls.”

“Anything more than that, like who the voices belonged to?” I asked.

“I’m just not sure. I think that the guy sounded familiar, but I can’t place how.”

“What about Orly? Did the guy sound like him?”

“No, Betts, I don’t think so. This was a younger voice, someone more my age.”

“So, the voice might have belonged to Norman?” I said.

“No,
another
male voice besides his,” Teddy said. “I think there were two male voices.”

“What about the girl or girls?”

Teddy shook his head. “I just can’t be sure. Maybe if I go hang out at the campsite again, I’ll hear something that clicks.”

“No!” Gram and I said together.

“I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere quite yet,” I said, though I wished it was a feasible idea for Teddy to come with us later that evening. It simply wasn’t, and it would be foolish for him to even try. He still needed rest.

“Well, I’m making you some homemade chicken soup,” Gram said as she stood.

“I’m not sick, Gram,” Teddy said.

“No? Well, you’re not well either, and chicken soup cures just about everything.” She walked around the couch and moved to the small galley area.

“I don’t know if I have all the ingredients,” Teddy said.

“I’ll figure it out,” Gram said.

Both Teddy and I knew not to mention that I’d already warmed up a can of chicken soup. Gram was going to make the soup no matter what.

Once she was mostly out of earshot, Teddy leaned toward me and said, “I remember a little of the argument I heard between Orly and Jezzie.”

I nodded surreptitiously.

“I’m pretty sure I heard Orly tell Jezzie that she’d ‘never get away with it.’ And then, Betts, I’m also pretty sure he said something about Norman. At least I think I heard Norman’s name. Would you go ahead and tell Cliff?”

“Sure,” I said. He wasn’t going to be happy that his cousin might have been involved in anything shady—a fight, a murder, whatever—but he needed to know.

“Thanks.” Teddy relaxed and closed his eyes.

My phone dinged quietly, announcing a text. I looked at the text as I stood and joined Gram in the galley.

“Jake has our contact for the new letter,” I said.

“Oh, good,” Gram said as she looked at the concoction in the pot on the stove. No matter what she’d put in it, I was sure its healing properties were stronger than the canned version I’d used. “I’ll have this done in a jiffy. Tell Jake we’ll be there soon.”

I nodded. I didn’t tell Gram the most interesting part of the text. Jake had said:
You won’t believe this one, Betts, and you won’t want to follow through and talk with the descendant, I promise.

“Opie! Opie’s a direct descendant of Alicia Zavon?” I said.

“Very direct,” Jake said. “It’s kind of amazing we didn’t know about it before, but I’ve never paid much attention to Alicia’s family tree.”

“But Opie lives for this kind of stuff. If she knew she was related to an infamous Broken Rope legend, she would have been shouting it from the treetops.”

“I guess she doesn’t know, then.” Jake shrugged. “Look, there’s the glitch of her daughter Elizabeth coming back to town. That’s where the error probably occurred. Elizabeth’s lineage just kind of got forgotten because she left her family back in California; a family of which one daughter was named Ophelia, by the way.”

“Oh, no, Opie was named after one of Alicia Zavon’s granddaughters?” I said.

“Seems that way,” Jake said.

“But then she should know already.”

“Maybe not. Maybe her parents only knew that Ophelia was a family name, even if they didn’t quite grasp the entirety of the true story of their ancestors.”

“Ugh. If she doesn’t know about all of this, her world is going to be rocked, and then she’ll be beyond impossible to be around. She’ll want to be crowned queen of all Broken Rope legends.”

Jake shrugged again. “Oh, she won’t be any more bothersome to you than she already is. As for the rest of us, I suppose we’ll adjust.”

“I’ve never quite disliked her the way you have, Betts,” Gram said, “but, yes, she will want some sort of accolade. Maybe a parade.” Gram scooted off the stool. “But nevertheless, we’ve got to get this letter delivered. Right away would be better than later.” She glanced at her watch. We still had time, if our visit was brief.

I tried to come up with a good case for not going out to Opie’s house and telling her about a non-delivered letter that would surely be the highlight of her life, or at least her week, but I couldn’t formulate one solid excuse. Even the fact that she recently broke up with Teddy wasn’t good enough. Teddy broke up with lots of girls, and lots of girls broke up with him.

“Oh, criminy,” I said, using one of Gram’s favorite terms. “Let’s go get it over with. We need to get back for everything this evening.”

After Jake outlined the details, we left for Opie’s, and we made quite the group. I gave Gram a lift in the Nova, and Joe and the horse followed behind, trotting so quickly that the horse’s hooves would have stirred up dirt if they’d been attached to an animal that was alive and it was back when all roads were unpaved.

Ophelia Buford lived in a mansion—well, a mansion by Broken Rope standards—on the edge of town. She and I had grown up together, enemies since we were young, enemies squared when we were in high school and Cliff broke up with her and started dating me shortly thereafter. No matter how he’d tried to make her understand that he hadn’t broken up with her just so that he could date me, that his feelings for me had been a surprise, she had never forgiven me for luring him away from her. Our relationship had been quite antagonistic toward each other. She was openly rude to me and I was openly rude to her. However, when she was dating Teddy, we’d both tried to mellow our bad feelings for each other. We’d become more passive-aggressive than just plain aggressive.

I didn’t know the details behind their breakup, but when Teddy told me that Opie had ended the relationship, I hadn’t felt the pure glee I’d anticipated when daydreaming of the day the happy event would occur. Instead, I was sorry for my brother’s broken heart. I didn’t understand Teddy and his Lothario ways, but he was my brother, and he didn’t attempt to hide the pain he felt over losing Opie. I also didn’t understand Opie, but the fact that she dumped my kid brother—no matter how much he might have deserved it, and he just might have—my feelings for her fell comfortably back to irritated dislike. For years I’d called her my personal Nellie Oleson, and now as far as I was concerned, it was really on. No more passive with my aggressive.

“Just be nice,” Gram said as we pulled onto the long birch tree–lined driveway. “We don’t know what happened. Teddy . . . well, he doesn’t have a great track record, Betts. As much as we love him, maybe Opie was right to dump him, though it bothers me, too. Just remember who we’re dealing with and that neither of them is all that talented with personal relationships.”

I made a noncommittal noise as I glanced in the rearview mirror at the horse and rider. Joe was bent over, the flap of his hat blowing somehow backward with the horse’s forward progression. How their movements were separate from the current-day movement of air around them baffled me. They didn’t stir up present-day dust, and the present-day dust and wind around them had no effect on their state of being. Two separate worlds, but taking up the same space.

As I looked back toward the driveway in front of us, something caused me to do a double take in the mirror. What had I seen on Joe’s face? For a fast and brief instant, it was as if something happened, transformed slightly, maybe, but my mind hadn’t picked up on it quickly enough to understand exactly what I’d seen. Had his face become less grimy for just a split second? Possibly. But why would it do that?

“What?” Gram asked as she twisted and looked out the back windshield.

“I’m not sure. I think I saw . . . I’m not sure what I saw.”

“I don’t see anything unusual. Well, unexpected,” she said before she turned around again.

I shook it off and turned my attention fully toward the front of Opie’s family’s mansion. The white, stately manor was wide and intimidating. Four thick columns punctuated the front, and the windows were perfectly placed and reminded me of a friendly jack-o’-lantern. The wide double front doors, each with a large brass knocker, gave the whole place more of an Oz castle aura than a country home feel.

Opie had never moved out of her parents’ house. She hadn’t ever behaved as if she’d even considered the idea. Her parents traveled frequently, so she often had the whole place to herself. And it was a big place; ten thousand square feet of living space with a huge pool and some horse acreage extending from the back.

During the moments I wasn’t irritated by her, I had to give her at least a little credit. She was as unfriendly as she could be to me, but she’d never flaunted her family’s fortune. Well, at least not in a snobbish way. I’d seen her pull out her checkbook and throw lots of money at Broken Rope issues with no request for anonymity, but she’d never done it to prove herself better than anyone; she’d just known what needed to be done, and she knew she had the funds to take care of the problem. She’d never asked for any sort of thank-you in return.

I also had to give Teddy a little credit. He hadn’t fallen for Opie’s money—I knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t lying to me when he said he couldn’t have cared if she was poor. Teddy wasn’t all that into money himself. He lived simply, making more than enough money to pay his bills and still have the type of fun he liked to have.

I hadn’t brought it up with him, but I suspected that his less-than-über-ambitious nature might have been at least part of the reason Opie had thought to end the relationship. Despite her humble behavior when it came to income, I couldn’t see her living in his cabin, and he’d never consider living in her family’s house.

“I’ll be nice. Or as nice as she allows me to be,” I said after I parked in the driveway and we got out of the car.

“No, you have to be nicer than that. Just ignore her if she tries to get you riled, Betts. We just need to deliver this letter.”

“I wish we’d let Jake do this one, too.”

“No, I want to do this one. We’re getting close to the end with Joe—whatever that might be. I feel I owe it to him. I wished I’d been the one to talk to Jim. Afterward, it bothered me, and I’m not going to make that mistake again.”

I was surprised to hear that she was regretful, but I said, “I understand.”

“Ready?” Gram said as she looked at me.

“Yes.”

“Ready?” Gram said to Joe, who’d dismounted and was standing behind us.

He rubbed his finger under his nose and then scratched his ear. His face was as dirty as it had been when I first met him. I still didn’t understand what I’d seen a moment earlier. “Yes, ma’am.”

We walked up to the front doors. Gram lifted one of the heavy knockers and tapped lightly. We could hear the sound echo through the cavernous house. Opie’s BMW was parked around the side of the garage, out of sight from anyone who didn’t take the time to take a quick look. I suspected her parents were traveling again.

It was a long moment before a slight shuffle of footsteps moved toward the door. The hesitation after they stopped made me think that Opie was considering her visitors through the peephole long and hard. I tried to keep my expression neutral.

The door finally opened.

“Miz, Betts, what’s up?” Opie asked.

She looked terrible. Normally, when she wasn’t in costume as a local historical character, she was done up. She wasn’t shy with makeup, and her bleached blond hair was always a little bigger than it seemed it should be. She wore her clothes tight—and it truly got under my skin that she looked good in things a size or two smaller than what she should be wearing.

But today, she was different. I wondered why she’d opened the door. There was not a stitch of makeup on her face, and her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail. She wore sweats that were perhaps older than my own favorite pair.

“Uhm, everything okay with Teddy?” she asked, before we could answer her first question.

So that’s why she opened the door. A part of me wanted to understand what had gone on between her and my brother. A bigger part still didn’t want the details.

Gram looked at me and then back at Opie.

“He’s fine, Ophelia. We’re just here to share some information with you. We found out something we thought you might find fun and interesting,” Gram said.

“What’s it about?” Opie said.

“We came upon some evidence that you are related to one of our more infamous citizens,” Gram said with a fake smile. This wasn’t any easier on her than it was me; she just wanted to be more mature.

Opie’s eyes lit brighter. “Who?”

“Can we come in, Ophelia? There’s a letter attached to our discovery and we’d like to read it to you.”

“Sure,” she said, no hesitation.

I recognized that a part of me kind of liked that we might be telling her something to bring her out of whatever funk she was in. What was wrong with me? I had no doubt that at any minute she might say or do something that would insult me directly. Why would I be happy to make her feel better about anything?

Gram led the way inside. I followed her, and Joe followed me; the horse remained outside this time. Joe whistled when we were in the entryway; it was decorated with a large round table adorned with a vase of fresh flowers. A crystal chandelier hung above the table, and even though it wasn’t lit, the sun, coming in from a window above the front doors, made all the small crystal pieces shimmer.

“These folks are richer than everyone I knew combined,” Joe said.

Evidence of the Buford fortune continued as Opie led us out of the entryway and into a library next to it. The room wasn’t small, but it wasn’t so big that it took away its cozy feel. One red velvet chaise took up the space beside the front window, and four high-back leather chairs filled the middle, facing each other in pairs; tall Tiffany lamps were placed in between each pair.

The walls were, of course, filled with hardback books, probably many of them first editions, though I doubted Opie cared much about the books. She wasn’t ever much of a reader, or a student. She didn’t have to get the grades to put her in the running for college scholarship money. She hadn’t had the ambition I’d been required to have to maintain a 4.0 in high school, finish college at the top of my class, and then jump into law school. I did drop out of law school a year and a half in, which was a humiliation she hadn’t had to face. And, other than the fact that Cliff had broken up with her and then started dating me, she’d probably had lots more fun than I did when we were younger. And we’d both ended up in pretty much the same place: Broken Rope, either working or living with our families. I tried not to dwell on the irony.

We each sat in one of the leather chairs as Joe perused the books on the shelves. He seemed much more interested in those than in our sharing of the letter.

“Ophelia, it’s a long complicated story of how we came upon the letter I want to read to you. And the hows and whys won’t make a lot of sense anyway, so would you mind if we just skipped over that part? Jake authenticated it and then researched how you were related. Can you just trust me on that?” Gram said.

Opie sent a quick but unmistakable glance of doubt in my direction but gave Gram a fully agreeable nod. “Of course, Miz.”

“Good. Well, here it is.”

Gram put on her reading glasses and then read the reproduced letter, written by Jake on parchment, just like the first letter, from Elizabeth to her mother, Alicia Zavon.

Opie was enthralled, literally on the edge of her seat through the entire reading. I don’t think she breathed or blinked until after Gram was done.