Murder at the Blue Plate Café (A Blue Plate Café Mystery) (4 page)

The next day went by in a flurry of Donna-directed business. Tom did not go with us, and on the twenty-minute drive to Canton, Donna suddenly began to confide. “I’m bored, Kate. Bored with my life. That’s why I want to open a B & B.”

At a loss for words, I stumbled, my thoughts on Tom’s outburst on the way to Gram’s last night. “But your husband and children adore you, and you have so much responsibility taking care of them….” My voice sort of trailed off.

“Tom!” She almost spat the name. “I don’t know what I ever saw in him. Big overgrown kid, happy to stay in this small town and run his rinky-dink hardware store. I have more ambition.”

I was as appalled as she had sometimes been at my Dallas lifestyle. She really didn’t love Tom any more, and as far as I could tell, he would do anything to make her happy and to have a wife who cooked, cleaned, loved her children—and maybe loved him.

She shrugged, as if to change the subject. “Don’t worry. I’m not about to do anything foolish or sudden. But a B & B is the beginning of my new life plan. I just don’t know why it took me so long to get to it.”

Try as I might, I couldn’t put the conversation out of my mind as we went through the day of business calls. We visited the lawyer—without an appointment, which meant we waited almost forty-five minutes while Donna tapped her nails on the wooden arm of her chair and I contentedly made a grocery list and then pulled out my Kindle and read. The lawyer, Don Davidson, had known Gram all my life—probably his too—and he greeted us cordially with sincere condolences.

Donna dabbed at her eyes—
now what was that about?
—and said we were here about the will.

“I can schedule the reading for late this week, say Thursday, and then it will have to go to probate. That often takes about a month or more. Meanwhile, don’t sell any of your grandmother’s things or make commitments. Legal procedures take time.” He smiled, as though trying to soften the blow. “I need access to the books for the café, and we’ll have to have an appraisal of both the café and the house.”

Donna scoffed. “No one will want to buy an old-fashioned café in a dead one-horse town, and the house isn’t worth anything. Why can’t you just tell us what the will says?” Her tone was demanding. “I’m sure everything goes to the two of us.”

I waited for his reply, because I knew Gram had made other bequests. Donna’s bold assumption startled me.

“I checked. There are a few other bequests, and I have to notify everyone who might have an interest in the will to be present. Besides, I need to see the books and tax returns for the café.”

Donna’s mouth tightened. “Gram turned all that over to that new accountant that came to town a couple of years ago—William Overton. He keeps the checkbooks, though Gram signed the checks, and I’m empowered to do it, and he does the payroll and taxes and all that sort of stuff.”

I couldn’t imagine Gram turning her affairs over to anyone. She had always been so private about them. But before I could say anything, Don Davidson asked, “Is he a CPA?”

“That’s what his business card says,” Donna said tightly. Clearly she didn’t like the situation, and I began to suspect she wanted control of the money herself. That would explain why Gram had hired the CPA, a question that had been puzzling me.

Quietly, Gram confirmed my suspicion. “Donna wanted to go to court and take over the business end of things. Hold firm.” Now there was an amazing thought. I wished I could whisper back, “Thanks, Gram.”

“I’d like to be empowered to sign checks too,” I said, “since I’ll be running the café. And I’d like a look at Mr. Overton’s books.”

Donna threw me a really disgusted look.

“Sounds reasonable,” Davidson said, “but you’ll have to take that up with him.”

Donna changed the subject. “I suppose it will be months before we get any money?” She almost wailed, and then, with less tact than usual for her, said, “I’ve found a house for a B & B, and I need the money.”

I stared at her, sure my mouth was hanging open.

Don simply said, “You’ll have to secure any loans some other way. You can’t pledge estate money until it’s granted.”

Donna stood up abruptly. “Fine. What time Thursday?”

“How about if I come to Wheeler? We can do the reading either at your house, Donna, or at Johnny’s house. I understand you’re staying there, Kate?”

Suddenly I jumped in. “Yes, and I am, and I think it would be appropriate to read it at Gram’s house.”

“Fine, I’ll be there at ten-thirty—would that suit?”

I assured him it would. Donna nodded tensely and then barely took the hand he offered in farewell.

Back in the car, I ventured, “You weren’t very polite.” I really wanted to tell her she’d been rude, rude, rude.

“I didn’t see the need for niceties,” she snapped.

Things went a little better at the funeral home. The director, a stereotypically unctuous man with sweaty hands and halitosis, asked if we’d like to view the body. We declined. Then he showed us caskets, and we jointly chose the plainest wooden one there—that, we agreed, was what Gram would want. We provided a list of pallbearers—Tom, of course, and then mostly church members. We had agreed that the burial service would be private, before the eleven o’clock memorial service, so it was set for ten at the town cemetery. We’d include staff of the café and that was all. Gram had no relatives except for Donna, Tom, the grandchildren, and me.

The bank deposit box yielded some stock certificates, CD notes, and other financial data, plus some surprising jewelry—a diamond pendant necklace that I thought was probably quite valuable, unless it was paste, which I doubted, and a ruby ring. There were also adoption certificates, showing that Gram had officially adopted us girls—somehow that was very comforting. And a yellowed clipping about the crash that killed our parents. I didn’t want to read that. Donna scooped up everything and dumped it in a book bag she’d brought for the purpose.

“Shouldn’t the financial data go to Don Davidson? It’s part of the estate. We can’t just keep it.” I knew Donna wanted the jewelry more than I did, and I’d just let her have that. I wasn’t so much the diamonds-and-rubies kind of a girl. Give me silver and turquoise.

She looked as though she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “Of course,” she said. “We’ll run these by his office.”

We did that, and then I managed to request again a trip to the local H-E-B, to which Donna acquiesced more easily than I expected. “I need some things too. But are you going to cook for yourself?”

“A little,” I said. “I’ll eat at the café a lot, because I want to keep my hand in. But I need munchies—and wine—at the house.” So I bought vegetables, sliced deli meat, bread, mayonnaise, wine and beer, and a few other things. I needed to take stock of what Gram had in the way of supplies, like toilet paper and paper towels and cleaning things, but I could always come back. There still wasn’t really a good supermarket in Wheeler, but there was a mom-and-pop grocery for emergencies.

On the way home, I hesitantly asked the question that had been bothering me. “Donna, do you think Gram really died of a heart attack? She doesn’t seem like a likely candidate to me. Did they do an autopsy?”

“An autopsy?” she shrieked. “I wouldn’t have allowed it, and they said there was no need. It was clearly death from natural causes. Where are you going with this line of thought?”

“I don’t know,” I said unhappily. “There’s just something in the back of my mind that won’t go away. I keep wondering if someone poisoned her.”

“Poisoned her? Kate, that’s ridiculous.” Donna didn’t even look at me.

We drove the rest of the way in silence.

But as we neared the edge of Wheeler, she suddenly spoke. “You know, Angela Thompson, our mayor, had a real bee in her bonnet about Gram. She wanted the café, used to pull unexpected health inspections, question the financing, all that kind of stuff. Gram had no time for the woman, almost told her to get out and not come back, but I convinced her she couldn’t quite do that to the mayor of the town. I don’t know what it was really all about, not that I think it’s relevant to what you’re hinting at.”

Mayor Angela Thompson was a woman who’d come to Wheeler after I left and pushed herself into power. I didn’t know much about her, but I understood she was aggressive and power-hungry. “She have political ambitions beyond mayor?” I asked.

Donna nodded. “I’ve heard she’d like to run for state representative and then go from there. She’s only a few years older than us, so she has time to build a career.”

So do we all
.

****

I decided to find about more about Angela Thompson. For some reason, it occurred to me that Steve
Millican
might be just the right person to ask. But then, a mayor wouldn’t take the risk of committing a murder, and that was really what I was wondering about.

In spite of her pronouncement about the filth of the café, Mayor Thompson frequently came in for lunch and often ordered food to go.
Marj
told me that when she came in she usually had some caustic remark about noting that business was slow—it wasn’t—or that the café really needed redecorating. When she said that to me a day later, I smiled and said I liked it the way Gram had left it.

Apparently sometimes when Tom came for lunch, he offered to deliver the mayor’s “to go” order. “I like to keep on her good side,” he said. I would find it a relief to avoid seeing her. One day as I packed a Styrofoam container with fried chicken, mashed potatoes and turnip greens, Tom commented, “She sure is a southern gal, for all her airs. She likes her greens.”

Turnip greens still gave me the willies.

Tom was a fairly frequent lunch customer. He explained that Donna was so busy with floor plans and fabric swatches, that she didn’t much like to fix his lunch, and he was tired of leftovers which, he implied, often weren’t that good to begin with.

“The kids and I are getting fairly elaborate breakfasts though, ’cause she thinks she has to learn to cook breakfast for the B & B. We’ve had eggs Benedict—but her Hollandaise curdled the first two times she tried it. The blueberry muffins were good, and the omelets aren’t bad, sometimes a bit overcooked. She did something the other day she called a ‘cheese strata,’ whatever that is, and it was pretty good.”

My sister, the cook
. “Tell her I can help with the Hollandaise if she wants. I have a foolproof recipe—well, almost.” I paused a moment. “So Donna’s going ahead with the B & B plans, even though we haven’t gotten our inheritance?”

“Yeah. I put the store up as collateral, since the inheritance seems a sure thing. I can afford the interest, and it keeps Donna happy, gives her something to do.”

“Have you told your mom?”

He nearly choked on his hamburger steak. “Good golly, no! She’d have a conniption. She’d be telling me the store was Dad’s life, his legacy to me.” He looked glum when he added, “And she’d be right. I feel awful about it, but I…well I can’t live with a bored, unhappy Donna. I still love her like I did in high school. I want our marriage back, so I did something I may live to regret.”

I kept quiet about the ominous feeling I had that Tom was heading down a steep and treacherous slope.

Other days we talked inconsequentially of nothing—what his children were doing. He was the soccer coach for both the girls’ and boys’ teams which included Ava and Henry but left little Jess on the sideline. I promised to go sit with her at some of the games. Tom was also an avid fisherman and fished the nearby lakes for crappie and catfish and an occasional bass or perch. “I’ll fix your catfish,” I said. “You don’t have to catch your own.”

“I’ll catch it and bring it for you to cook.”

“Already cleaned of course or there’s no deal.”

He high-fived me, grinning.

I went right to work at the café, figuring I should get back in the groove if this was what I was going to do. I worked in the kitchen, plating lunches and dinners, covered the cash register for
Marj
, and took my turn at waiting on the counter so she could have a lunch break.

The second day I was there, I took over the counter. A man in a police uniform had just come in. Tall, lean, dark-haired with a sort of imperious look about him, he studied the menu and then shoved it aside.

“Decided what you want?” I asked. Then I noticed his badge said, “Wheeler Chief of Police.” “So you’re the new chief of police,” I said, trying to make pleasant conversation. “I’m Johnny Chambers’ granddaughter, Kate. Glad to meet you.”

He nodded but made no effort to shake hands. “Sorry about your grandmother,” he said perfunctorily.