A Plain Vanilla Murder, page 24
Mrs. Birkett dropped the pieces of split, scraped pod into a small glass jar filled with sugar, capped it, and shook it to mix. “I love vanilla sugar in my coffee and tea. Smoothies, too.” She put the jar on a shelf, went to the fridge, and came back with a carton of eggs. “These are from Mrs. Sanger’s little Leghorn flock,” she said, opening the carton. “She lives on the next street over—close enough that I can hear her rooster crowing in the morning.”
Spock cocked his head, fixed one bright eye on the eggs, and then lifted his head and crowed exactly like a rooster.
I couldn’t help laughing, which encouraged Spock to crow again. “The eggs are very nice,” I said, although these were white eggs and not quite as large and pretty as Caitie’s brown eggs. “But Spock is incredible.”
“He is, isn’t he?” Mrs. Birkett sighed. “You can almost carry on a conversation with that bird. I just wish he weren’t so loud.”
“Logic is good,” Spock said. “Make it so.” Bobbing his head, he subsided into a background chatter of mutters and grumbles, punctuated by periodic squeaks that sounded like a highly rhythmic, repetitive rap.
“I always like to use Grandma Jane’s old rotary hand-crank eggbeater.” Mrs. Birkett opened a drawer and took it out. “It’s quicker than a whisk and quieter than an electric mixer. And it makes me think of her.” She took a couple of bowls out of the cupboard and put them on the table.
Searching for something to talk about—something other than Chelsea’s kidnapping or vanilla murders—I remembered the reason I was here.
“Yesterday at the shop, you mentioned that you’ve rented your cottage,” I said, “and that something about the arrangement is worrying you. Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Thank you, yes.” She took an egg out of the carton and broke it expertly, draining the egg white into one bowl and dropping the unbroken yolk into the other. “I wonder if you remember Shelley Harmon. She and a friend lived in my cottage a few years ago.”
“I do remember her,” I replied. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking of her just a few moments ago. Shelley worked for Ruby and me at the shops, so we knew her pretty well—and liked her, too. I’ve always thought that the university made a mistake, not releasing the details about her death. It seems to have been an accident, but the way the university authorities handled it left too much to the imagination.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Mrs. Birkett said. “Shelley was a lovely girl who did quite a few little chores for me in return for part of the rent—weeding the garden, washing windows, helping with the grocery shopping. I felt I knew her well, and Beth Craig, too, her roommate. Beth was one of the students in the van when it went off the road and down a steep hill.” She paused, adding emphatically, “And it wasn’t an accident.”
“Really?” I remembered Beth, a tall, blond, athletic girl, who had come into the shop several times when Shelley was working there. “Did she tell you what happened? There were lots of rumors floating around, but nothing very substantive. I heard several versions—all the way from a wreck that was caused by a rogue monkey to a shootout with drug smugglers.”
“Beth said the van was fired on.” Mrs. Birkett reached for another egg.
I stared at her. “Fired on? Drug smugglers, then?”
She shook her head. “Vanilla thieves.”
I was shocked, but not surprised, not really. The price of vanilla had gone through the roof since Cyclone Enawo had hit Madagascar, and it took a lot less work to steal vanilla than to grow it. Theft was an increasing hazard for vanilla farmers, who sometimes lost their whole year’s harvest to thieves before it was cured—often before it had even fully ripened. But surely a rented van full of American college kids couldn’t have been mistaken for a truck with a load of vanilla beans. So there must have been something else, something—
“How in the world did it happen?” I asked.
“Beth said there had already been several robberies on the road.” Deftly, Mrs. Birkett broke the egg and separated it. “The local people told Dr. Fairlee he ought to take a different road, especially because they were following a truck loaded with bags of ripe vanilla pods—an easy target. He insisted that everything would be all right, but he was wrong.”
“He insisted?”
“Beth said that even their guide tried to get him to change his mind. The thieves were dressed like soldiers and armed—with assault rifles. They had set up a barricade so they could stop and plunder any vehicles that were loaded with vanilla beans. The guide told Dr. Fairlee to wait—that the robbers would take what they wanted off the truck and then let them pass. But he panicked and turned around. The thieves fired into the rear of the van as he drove away, and he veered off the road and hit a tree.” Her mouth tightened. “Shelley died of a gunshot wound. She was shot in the back.”
Oh, God. So that’s how it happened. I sucked in my breath. “You’ve heard, I suppose. About Dr. Fairlee, I mean?”
“That he killed himself?” There was something between sadness and a wry understanding in her voice. “Yes. I heard it on television yesterday evening. And I wondered, you know.”
“Wondered what?”
“Whether it had anything to do with Shelley. His suicide, I mean.”
I opened my mouth to correct her but decided against it. The police hadn’t released the news about his murder yet. She would know soon enough. So I went back to the subject. “Was Beth injured in the wreck?”
“She had a concussion.” Mrs. Birkett broke another egg, the white neatly into one bowl, the yolk just as neatly into the other. “I was quite worried about her for a while. But she recovered. She transferred to the University of Texas at the end of the spring semester. She said it was just too painful for her to live here without her friend. They had been together for several years.”
“I guess I’m not surprised,” I said.
“Neither was I.” Mrs. Birkett rinsed her hands at the sink and dried them on a towel. “Actually, I heard from Beth just a couple of weeks ago. I thought she might have gotten over Shelley’s death by now, but she hasn’t. She’s upset with the university for not doing a more thorough investigation—and especially for not releasing the facts. And she’s still furious with Dr. Fairlee. She says that if he’d paid attention to the warnings instead of brushing them off, Shelley would be alive right now. She thinks he ought to have been charged. Negligent homicide, or something.” She looked at me. “You’ve had experience with this kind of thing. What do you think?”
I straightened in my chair. What did I think? To tell the truth, while Mrs. Birkett was talking, I had been wondering if Beth might have been angry enough at Carl Fairlee to kill him, in revenge for her friend’s death. I didn’t think so, or maybe I didn’t want to think so. But I knew I would have to mention this conversation to Sheila, as a possible area of investigation. In my former incarnation as a criminal lawyer, I had come to understand that revenge is as powerful a motive for murder as sex and money.
But Mrs. Birkett wouldn’t want to hear my speculations about Beth. “What do I think?” I repeated. “I think that making a charge against Dr. Fairlee would have been politically difficult for the Mexican police. And in the absence of a criminal charge by the local authorities, the university could hardly take a unilateral punitive action. What’s more, if they admitted any kind of liability on Dr. Fairlee’s part, they were opening themselves to a suit.” I paused. “In fact, I heard that Shelley’s mother was so distraught and angry that she’d hired a lawyer and was planning to sue both Dr. Fairlee and CTSU for wrongful death.”
“I heard that, too,” Mrs. Birkett said. “In fact, Beth told me that Mrs. Taylor—Shelley’s mother—had gotten in touch with her several times. Apparently, she had talked to the Mexican authorities, to the students in the van with Shelley, and even to their guide on that trip, Señor Aguado. She said she was trying to find out as much as she could about the accident because she was planning to sue Dr. Fairlee for putting them into a dangerous situation.”
“Easier to claim than to prove,” I said. “And in the end, I guess Shelley’s mother and her attorney decided they didn’t have a strong enough case. There’s a two-year statute of limitations for wrongful death. The time has run out and I haven’t heard that they’ve filed.”
“Illogical,” Spock said, breaking off his private rap. He scooted along his perch from one end to the other, clicking his beak. “Illogical, zoological, biological.”
Mrs. Birkett sighed. “There’s more, I’m afraid—something I find very uncomfortable to talk about. I suppose I’m terribly old-fashioned.”
“Old-fashioned?”
She took a breath. “Beth says that Dr. Fairlee should also have been charged with sexual misconduct.”
Uh-oh. But I wasn’t surprised by this, either. I had heard from Maggie about her ex and his students. “Was it Beth?” I asked. “Or Shelley?” Or both? I wouldn’t put it past him.
“It was Shelley. Beth said he was ‘hitting on her’ all during the trip.” She gave a small smile. “I had to ask her what that meant, and I was truly saddened—and shocked, too, I’m afraid—by what she told me. Shelley wasn’t having anything to do with it, Beth said, but Dr. Fairlee wouldn’t take no for an answer.” She pulled down her mouth. “This is so hard for me to understand. In my day, you know, professors were gentlemen. They didn’t behave like that.”
Or if they did, I thought, nobody knew, because the women were afraid that if they told, nobody would believe them. That was long before #MeToo and public accusations in social media. And before colleges and universities became wary of lawsuits by young women like Shelley against lecherous professors like Carl Fairlee.
But I was puzzled, and perhaps just a little impatient with this detour the conversation had taken. “Are we on a different subject? We’re talking about Shelley’s death, and Beth, and I’m wondering what this might have to do with your current renter.”
“Engage!” Spock squawked, and flung himself onto his trapeze, where he swung violently back and forth. “Engage! Engage!”
Mrs. Birkett seemed to be turning something over in her mind, feeling its weight, seeing it from different angles. “It’s odd, you know,” she said at last, reaching for a third egg. “Just very odd.”
“What’s odd?” I asked. “In what way?”
Mrs. Birkett wiped her hands on her blue apron. “Well, when my student renters moved out at the end of the spring semester, I ran an ad in the Enterprise. I usually rent the cottage just for June, July, and August, to girls who are here for summer school. So I was a bit surprised when I got a call from a middle-aged lady, a nurse who is filling a temporary position in the ER, over at the hospital. She said she planned to work in Pecan Springs only through the end of the year.” She took a fourth egg out and closed the carton. “She didn’t like apartments, and she had driven by the cottage and thought it looked very comfy—‘homey’ was her word. She said her job was terribly stressful and she would be working odd shifts, so she wanted to live away from people, someplace where it was quiet and she didn’t have to cope with a lot of neighbors. She especially liked the idea of living at the end of a street, at the edge of a woods. When I met her, I liked her.” Glancing at me, she said, “You’ve met her too, China.”
“I have?”
“Yes. When I told her I planned to attend your vanilla workshop, she was very interested. She asked if she could go with me. In fact, she was sitting right beside me at the workshop. She’s the one who asked about vanilla’s medicinal uses. Her name is Karen Taylor.”
“Fascinating,” Spock said.
“Oh, sure,” I said, remembering. “As a matter of fact, I saw Karen yesterday, too. She came to the tea room for lunch. She said that her house has a greenhouse window in the kitchen—”
“It does,” Mrs. Birkett said, and separated the last egg into the two dishes.
“—and that she was interested in getting a vanilla plant. So I sent her out to Sonora.” I cocked my head. “Why is this ‘odd,’ Mrs. Birkett?”
“Because,” the old lady said, “Karen Taylor is Shelley Harmon’s mother.” She finished separating the egg, picked up all the shells, and tossed them into the trash bin under the sink.
“Shelley’s . . . mother?” I looked up sharply, as startled as if I’d been slapped. “But why in the world—” I broke off, trying to make sense of this, then tried again. “I mean, I guess I can understand why Shelley’s mom might want to stay in the cottage, for sentimental reasons—”
I stopped again. Actually, I didn’t understand this at all. What was going on here? I settled for two rather lame questions. “Did she tell you that? When did you find out?”
Mrs. Birkett added a couple of tablespoons of sugar to the egg yolks, and began to beat them with the rotary beater. Spock cackled and started to make a whirring clatter that sounded remarkably like the beater.
Mrs. Birkett raised her voice. “No, she didn’t tell me. I had to figure it out for myself.”
I frowned. “So how did you find out?”
“By accident.” She turned the beater handle rapidly for several moments, then stopped to add a couple of dollops of cream and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. “The water heater in the cottage had been leaking, and I ordered a replacement. Karen was at work the day the plumber brought the new heater, so I went next door to show him where it had to go. The heater is in a closet off the hallway, and Karen’s bedroom door was open.” She set the bowl of egg yolks aside and went to the sink to rinse off the beater. Over her shoulder, she said, “On the dresser, there was an altar to Shelley.”
Another surprise. “An . . . altar?”
She came back to the table, put the clean beater into the bowl of egg whites, and began beating them, hard. Over the whirr of the beater and Spock’s imitation of it, she said, “Well, I don’t know what else to call it. A shrine, maybe? There were a half-dozen photos of Shelley—some taken when she was just a little girl, others as she grew older. There were a couple of small stuffed animals, a little doll and some child’s jewelry, several candles, an incense burner.” She stopped beating, turned the bowl and scraped it, then started beating again.
“Sounds like she deliberately kept it from you,” I said thoughtfully. “That she is Shelley’s mother. I wonder why.”
“I wondered, too,” Mrs. Birkett said. “That evening when she got off work, I went next door and told her what I had seen. At first she accused me of snooping, but when I pointed out that the rental agreement allows me to come in at any time to make repairs, she backed off. That’s when she said, yes, she was Shelley’s mom. She was afraid I’d think it wasn’t a good idea, moving into the house where her daughter had lived, and that I maybe wouldn’t rent to her. She was hoping that living in the cottage might make her feel better—bring her some closure, maybe.”
“I suppose that makes a certain kind of sense,” I said slowly. “Still . . .”
“I know,” Mrs. Birkett said, frowning. “It does, and it doesn’t. Shelley has been dead for several years. Why now? And why—” She lifted the egg beater and the whites stood up in stiff, glossy peaks. “There’s more, you see.”
“More?”
She began folding the pale, creamy egg yolks into the stiffly beaten whites, blending them in carefully. “Well, something about Karen made me very . . . uncomfortable. I don’t know what—her intensity, or perhaps a certain . . . imbalance. I’m sorry. I ought to be able to find a better way to describe it. But maybe if I tell you . . .” She turned to the stove, dropped butter into an omelet pan, and turned on the gas flame.
“Tell me . . . what?” I prompted, now very curious.
“You’re going to think I’m terribly snoopy.”
“Probably.” I chuckled. “You’re not going to tell me that you went poking around in Karen’s house, are you? Looking through her dresser drawers? Reading her mail?”
“No, not that.” She swirled the melting butter in the pan. “But I did start keeping a closer eye on her. So when I saw—” The butter was turning brown and sizzling softly. She picked up the bowl of blended eggs and cream and tipped it into the skillet.
I couldn’t help myself. “When you saw . . .”
She set the empty bowl down. “When I saw her going into the storm cellar several times, late one night.” She wrapped a potholder around the handle of the pan and picked it up, tilting and turning it so that the egg mixture evenly covered the bottom. “I began to wonder.”
I blinked. “Storm . . . cellar?”
“That’s what folks called it when I was a girl. I think they call it a storm shelter these days. Anyway, years ago, a tornado tore through Pecan Springs. It did quite a bit of damage and killed several people. Grandma Jane decided that she needed a place to go if a tornado was coming, so she hired a man to build it for her. They put it in the backyard of the cottage, out by the fence. It’s made of cement blocks, about six feet by six feet inside, half-buried in the ground, with dirt piled over the top. Grandma planted a honeysuckle on it, which has gotten quite large by now, so the cellar is pretty well covered up. And I planted some nandina bushes in front of the door, for a screen. If you didn’t know it was there, you might not even notice it.”
With a spatula, she began lifting the cooked portions of the omelet, tilting the pan so that the uncooked eggs could flow out toward the edges. Taking a breath, she went on with her story.
“To start with, the cellar had a wooden door. But it rotted out a few years ago, and I had it replaced with a metal door with a swivel handle. It’s so heavy that I can barely lift it, but that doesn’t matter because I haven’t had to use it for years.”
Leaving the omelet where it was for a moment, she reached for the platter of bacon keeping warm on the back of the stove. She put it on the table, along with a plate containing two plump, warm cinnamon rolls laced with vanilla icing.
“I always point it out when somebody rents the cottage,” she went on. “I show them where it is, in case of a storm. But none of them have ever had to use it, either. Until—”
