The Final Crumpet (12 page)

“There you go! Ask him to mention your hotline when he airs his story. That should shake loose a few interesting tidbits.”

“Tidbits aren’t enough. I need big chunks of real information. I have a major exhibit to feed.”

“Well, if I were trying to gather lots of details about a famous man who disappeared forty years ago, I’d try to locate the law firm who worked with his heirs.”

“Why? All but one of Makepeace’s heirs are dead, too.”

“Famous people tend to be wealthy, and wealthy people tend to have relatives who are eager to get their hands on the money. I assume that Makepeace’s kin eventually had him declared legally dead so they could collect under the terms of his will. I think English law and American law are pretty much the same—seven years after a person goes missing, a court can declare him dead. Remember the number one rule: Follow the money.”

“I still don’t get where you’re going with this.”

“Lawyers ask questions about people and write things down. Maybe there’s an old file gathering dust in a law office that contains more of the information you’re looking for?”

“I suppose it’s possible…”

“Talk about ungrateful! Need I remind you that you called me without any warning? You try to come up with fabulous ideas on the fly. Repeat after me: ‘Uncle Ted, I owe you big-time.’ ”

Flick snickered. “I owe you big-time.”

“I’ll say you do—so pay be back by telling me about your love life. Your mother reports that you have a boyfriend in England.”

Flick hemmed, hawed, made excuses, and managed to end the conversation with only a cursory description of Nigel and a solemn oath to call back when she had more time to talk. She slipped the mobile phone into her purse and spoke to Cha-Cha, “I feel energized, and I’m having second thoughts about Uncle Ted’s ideas. What do you say we walk back to the museum and talk to a woman about a Web site?”

Flick walked fast enough to make Cha-Cha trot along the sidewalk after her. She wanted to catch Hannah Kerrigan, the museum’s new information technology guru, while she was still at her computer. Hannah worked odd hours—and often left early—so that she could take advanced computer courses at the Canterbury Christ Church University College. Flick had hired her a month earlier to enlarge and enhance the museum’s Web site:
www.teamuseum.org
.

Hannah was a petite woman in her early twenties, with flaming red hair, large brown eyes, and a pixyish grin that made one forget she could “speak” six different computer programming languages. Flick found her in her cubicle in the Conservation Laboratory, fiddling happily with an under-construction Web page on her computer. Hannah might have been able to fiddle more productively had not Lapsang and Souchong decided to pay her a visit. The big blue cats sprawled side by side across her keyboard, covering most of the top of her workstation.

Cha-Cha eyed the felines suspiciously but sat silently at Flick’s feet. She suspected that the three of them—raised together as puppy and kittens—had reached some sort of mutual accommodation. The cats probably discovered that a Shiba was a much more capable dog than his compact size suggested. Cha-Cha probably recognized that taking on a full-grown British Shorthair was not a clever idea—even for a feisty Shiba Inu.

“Wonder of wonders! Back from your walk, are you? Cha-Cha is available.”

Flick twirled around. There stood Nigel, sporting a remarkably contrite expression.

“The Japanese tour group,” he said. “Downstairs. Still time to show them Cha-Cha. Only if you don’t object.”

Flick needed several moments to interpret his fragmented request. When she finally understood, she handed him the dog lead. “I suspect that Cha-Cha will have the most fun. Our visitors will have met countless Shibas, but he hasn’t met many Japanese.”

“Well said! Truly astute. Will leave now. Must chat later. Many things.”

Flick noticed Nigel’s eyes dart between her face and Hannah’s.

He wants to apologize but not in front of Hannah.

Flick, not quite ready to let Nigel off the hook, replied with a curt nod. It was enough for Nigel—he tendered a remarkably silly smile and backed out of the laboratory, tugging Cha-Cha along the tiled floor.

“What’s that about then?” Hannah asked. She craned her neck to watch Nigel leave.

“Never you mind.”

“Pity. I’m always in the mood to hear a good love story.”

“I bring you something even better—a brief parole from your chores as our Webmistress.”

“Super! I’m having all sorts of difficulty with the JavaScript applet code for this new page.”

“I have no idea what you just said, but you seem the perfect person to help me establish a telephone hotline.” The obvious delight on Hannah’s face increased with every word of explanation that Flick provided.

“I know just the way to do it,” Hannah said. “I’ll transform one of our old computers into a telephone answering system and set up different categories.” She began to speak in an almost mechanical tone. “If you know anything about Etienne Makepeace’s childhood, please press 1.”

“That’s exactly what we need, but focus the information categories on tea. I want to know how Makepeace acquired his knowledge. Did he go to school? Did he have a mentor? Was he an autodidact?”

“An auto—
what?”

“A self-taught expert.” Flick tried to perch on the edge of the workstation. Lapsang, or was it Souchong, anticipated her move and stretched to fill even more of the surface. “The next part of your assignment is to locate an especially obscure fact related to the life and death of Etienne Makepeace.” She added, “I presume that your Internet research skills are brilliant?”

“Totally!”

“Good—because I need to know if Makepeace was declared legally dead by an English court, and if so, the name of the solicitor who acted for the Makepeace family. The earliest it could have happened was in 1973.”

“Wow!” Hannah said. “That’s ancient history, but I’ll see what I can find out.”

“In exchange, I’ll de-kitty your keyboard.” Flick scooped up the pair of cats, unceremoniously plopped them on the floor, and watched them saunter off to the other side of the laboratory. She sat down on the workstation.

“Lapsang and Souchong don’t bother me,” Hannah said. “They keep me company because I don’t pet them or make a fuss over them.”

“Sounds like cat thinking,” Flick said. “One of these days, we have to figure out which is Lapsang and which is Souchong.”

Hannah seemed bewildered. “You mean you don’t know?”

“We can guess, but the only person who could tell us for sure is dead. The cats arrived at the museum without collars or identification tags. The only clue we have is a handful of snapshots that the breeder took when the cats were kittens. They were included with the paperwork Elspeth Hawker originally gave to the museum.” Flick shrugged. “Now that the cats are grown up, their baby pictures are worthless.”

“Perhaps not.” Hannah leaned toward Flick as if she had a secret to share. “What if I take new digital photos of Lapsang and Souchong in roughly the same poses as the kitten shots? Then I could use Photoshop to compare the old images with the new. I might be able to recognize minor features that haven’t changed—a fleck of color in an eye, the shape of an ear, maybe markings on a nose.”

Flick threw back her head. “I love the idea! In fact, I’m furious that I didn’t think of it first. It’s certainly worth a try.”

Hannah began to count on her fingers. “First, I’ll program the computer. Second, I’ll search the Internet. Third, I’ll photograph the cats. Fourth, I’ll compare the old and new photos.”

“And fifth, you add a simple page to our current Web site that announces we’ll pay ten pounds for an interesting anecdote about Etienne Makepeace that involves tea. Acceptable anecdotes will have a minimum of two hundred fifty words.”

Hannah peered up at Flick. “Do I have a deadline?” Flick joked, “How about tomorrow at noon?”

“A piece of cake! I don’t have classes this evening, and I get in early on Tuesdays. I’ll probably be done by eleven in the morning.

My goodness! She’s serious.

Flick wanted to laugh but managed to mumble,
“Um
…thank you. I appreciate your dedication. I see us working together on many projects in the months ahead.”

Hannah peered up at Flick with brown eyes that now seemed years older and far more calculating. “In that case, tell me what’s going on with you and Mr. Owen. Did you cut him loose? Can anyone have a go at him?”

Flick heard herself gasp—and immediately felt foolish that she had overreacted. Why should a silly question from an occasionally harebrained computer techie have the power to startle her?

Because you don’t want to cut Nigel loose.

Flick slid to her feet, surprised at the depth of the fondness she suddenly felt for Nigel. “I will let you know if and when anyone can have a go at Nigel. Until then—”

Hannah didn’t wait for Flick to finish. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” she said with an embarrassed smile. “You can’t blame a girl for asking.”

Five

Nigel dried his face with a paper towel and glared at himself in the lavatory mirror. “Now you know what a blithering idiot sounds like. You haven’t behaved so ineptly since you were fifteen. What on earth made you act the fool?”

He crumpled the towel into a wad and realized that his question had an obvious answer. There was no mystery here. Anyone could recognize that he was caught on the horns of a ludicrous dilemma. One part of him wanted to apologize to Flick—and seek her forgiveness. The other part believed that she should apologize to him—and refused to let a repentant word pass his lips.

Falling in love certainly led to surprising complications.

He tried to remember if it was Keats or Browning who wrote that the course of true love never did run smooth. Either way, the words were proving painfully true. But neither he nor Flick had time in their busy lives for useless bickering. Something was bothering her about their relationship. He would have to sort the matter out as quickly as possible, for both their sakes.

Nigel stepped out of his private loo and discovered that Cha-Cha had claimed a pondered chasing him off but decided the sofa was so tatty that it hardly made sense to displace the dog. Once the acquisition of the Hawker antiquities was complete, he would have an opportunity to persuade the board of trustees that the director of the favorite forbidden roost—dead center atop Nigel’s leather-upholstered sofa. Nigel Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum deserved more elegant décor. His heavy and substantial wooden desk, on the verge of becoming an antique, could stay. But the various chairs in the room were long past their prime, as was the room’s tea-stained Oriental carpet.

Nigel glanced at his clock. The visiting Japanese were approaching the last leg of their museum tour. In ten minutes, Mirabelle Hubbard would shepherd them into the Duchess of Bedford Tearoom. Why not intercept them in the World of Tea Map Room? It was a perfect place to say a few words before they enjoyed their cream tea and boarded the bus back to London.

Nigel had begun to frame a few appropriate remarks when his phone rang. He moved behind his desk and checked the Caller ID panel: Margo McKendrick, in the Welcome Centre kiosk. He snatched up the receiver. “Hi, Margo.”

“Mr. Owen, sir, you have a visitor.”

Crikey.
Margo had used their agreed-upon code word for “VIP alert.” When she began a telephone call with “Mr. Owen, sir,” it signaled that an important person had arrived unexpectedly.

Margo went on. “Olivia Hart, from Wescott Bank, is here to see you.”

Nigel struggled to put a face to the name. He had made three trips to the bank’s London headquarters to work out the details of the loan package and had met eight different executives, but no Olivia Hart.

“Send her up at once,” he said.

He rang off and dialed Polly Reid’s telephone.

“A banker named Olivia Hart is riding the elevator to the third floor. Please steer her to my office when she arrives.”

“A banker?”

“I can’t figure it out either.” He dropped down into his chair to think.

Had he forgotten to schedule an important meeting? His calendar was empty that afternoon—but bankers generally didn’t show up unannounced.

An explanation flashed into his mind.

Of course! She’s here to talk about our security system.

Nigel relaxed. Olivia Hart must be a low-level security whiz sent to evaluate Conan’s new surveillance camera system. Who else but a head-in-the-clouds techie would show up without an appointment? He would pass her off as quickly as possible to Conan Davies. She’d undoubtedly have a grand time searching for disguised cameras in his office.

He heard a tap on his door. “Enter.”

The door swung open, revealing a woman stunning enough to be a supermodel. She struck Nigel as perfect in every way. To change anything—the symmetrical oval shape of her face, the sapphire blue of her piercing eyes, the enticing way she held her head—would diminish her beauty.