“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you know where he’s gone?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What’s that got to do with you, honey?”

  “Nothing,” Velvet said. “Other than that we have information pertinent to an important criminal matter, and we believe the chief of police might find it interesting. Even if you, sir, do not.”

  He gaped at her.

  “My friend means that if Chief Dawson isn’t far away we can find him and save you the trouble of delivering a message,” I said.

  “I do not,” Velvet said.

  “Yes,” I said, “you do.”

  The singing continued coming from the back. I smiled at the officer. Finally he shrugged and said, “Guess I can tell you. Seeing as to how you’re from Haggerman’s. Chief’s gone to Kennelwood to talk to the movie people about that killing you had.”

  “We didn’t have a killing,” I said. “Mr. Theropodous died at the hospital.”

  Another shrug.

  “Have the state police detectives arrived?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any word on when they will arrive?”

  He wiped more sweat away. “When they find the town, I reckon. Can you type?”

  “What?”

  “The clerk’s off sick, and I need to get this report finished before the chief gets back and . . .”

  “Better learn to type, then.” Velvet grabbed my arm and dragged me out the door. “Thanks for all your help.”

  “What got into you?” I asked her when we were back on the sidewalk. “It’s never a good idea to offend the local police.”

  “Can you type indeed? It’s after eleven. I need to get to work.”

  “As do I.”

  We passed the newspaper office, heading for my car, and I slowed to peek in the front window. June, the receptionist, was Chief Dawson’s wife, and I considered going in to ask if he’d said anything to her about the case. Then I saw the other people in the lobby, and I increased my pace.

  Too late. They’d spotted me. The door flew open and Jane Donaldson, the female reporter who’d been at Haggerman’s yesterday morning, ran out. “Mrs. Grady! A moment of your time.”

  “Run!” I said to Velvet.

  “Okay. I can do that. I need to work off that egg cream and that pie anyway. But it was worth it. Both of them were. Why must we run?”

  “Newspaper reporter. Not a friendly one.”

  Velvet slowed and turned to look.

  “You are not running,” I pointed out.

  “Mrs. Grady.” Jane sprinted after us. She was dressed in the same severe brown suit she’d had on yesterday, but today she wore a pink blouse with a floppy bow tied around the neck. Her shoes were thick-soled and practical with a solid low heel. Better for running than the strapless sandals I had on.

  “I’m sorry,” I called over my shoulder as I kept walking at a brisk pace. “I do not have a statement for the press, and I have an emergency to deal with at the hotel. A plumbing emergency, I mean. Nothing for you to concern yourself about.”

  “Has anyone else died after eating at your hotel?” she called to us.

  A passing man whipped his head around.

  “I wouldn’t repeat that if I were you,” Velvet said.

  I grabbed my friend’s arm. “Don’t get into it with her.”

  “Repeat what?” the woman said. “It happened, didn’t it? I’m only wanting to hear your side.”

  “I have no side,” I said. “It was unfortunate, yes. But Mr. Theropodous’s death had nothing to do with my hotel.”

  “Are you referring to Haggerman’s Catskills Resort?” she said in a too-loud voice. “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”

  A woman in a baggy, ill-hemmed housedress dragged her two children across the road to get out of our way. I kept walking.

  “Mrs. Grady, I suggest you talk to me. I am going to write this story, with or without your statement. You want to present your side, do you not?”

  I whirled around. “I have no side. What happened, happened.” Now who was getting into it with her? I took a breath. “I’m sorry, I have to go.” I walked away.

  I’ll say one thing for Jane Donaldson, the Dame of Gossip. She was persistent. Her voice followed us down the street. “My newspaper is widely read in New York City. You get a great deal of your guests coming from the city, do you not? People who read newspapers.”

  I stopped walking and turned again. “Are you threating me?”

  “Perish the thought. I’m asking for an interview. My readers are interested in what Elias Theropodous’s last words were.” Her eyes narrowed and the edges of her thin lips turned up. “In what he ate for his last meal. And where that was.”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “What paper are you with?” Velvet asked.

  “The New York Morning Standard.”

  “Hey!” Velvet said. “What d’ya know! That’s my uncle Brian’s paper. You remember Uncle Bry, Elizabeth. He came to my birthday party last year. Great guy. I love him to bits. Sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

  “Jane Donaldson,” the reporter said.

  “Jane Donaldson. I’ll mention to Uncle Bry that you chased us down the road and frightened innocent women and small children out of your way. When I call him, I’ll ask if he needs a statement from Elizabeth. She can give it to him directly. Bypass the middleman, or middlewoman, I should say. Bye!” Velvet marched down the street, her hand firm on my arm. The reporter made no attempt to follow us.

  When we were safely in my car, I said, “I’ve never met your uncle Brian. I didn’t know he owned a newspaper.”

  Velvet laughed. “Mighty quick thinking on my part, if I do say so myself. I went out with a guy once who was an advertising editor at that miserable rag. He told me the owner, Brian someone, is a mean son-of-a-you-know-what, but he’s a solid family guy and he dotes on his sister’s kids. They all call him Uncle Bry. Jane’ll realize I was bluffing pretty soon—she probably already has—but it set her back for a moment and got us away without more of a scene.” Velvet settled back in her seat and laughed heartedly.

  Chapter 15

  I bypassed checking in at the office and headed straight for the main kitchen. It was coming up to lunchtime, and I found the place in its usual state of chaos. Chef Leonardo was brandishing a knife at a cowering busboy.

  “Do put that down, Chef,” I said. “We don’t want any accidents around here.” I turned to the busboy. “Do you not have any work to do?”

  “No, ma’am. I mean, yes, ma’am, Mrs. Grady ma’am. I was just going to wash that knife.”

  “You touch my knife, boy, and I’ll have your fingers,” Chef Leonardo growled.

  The busboy fled. He was new. I could tell because he didn’t yet realize that despite numerous threats the chef hadn’t removed anyone’s appendages. Not yet.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Timmins. Do you know where he is?”

  “Dead, I dare hope.” My chef brought the knife down on a piece of beef, no doubt imagining it was the saladman’s head. They did not get on, to put it mildly.

  In a kitchen operation the size of ours—350 guests, more than a hundred employees, nine meals a day (guests, children, staff), plus room service, late-night dessert buffet, cocktail party, afternoon tea on the veranda, not to mention numerous other special occasions—the chef and the saladman are on the same seniority level and each has his own department and staff. The chef cooks the hot meals, the saladman is responsible for cold foods such as salads and desserts and sandwiches.

  “I saw Mr. Timmins going to the cold room a few minutes ago, Mrs. Grady,” a cook’s assistant said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I found the saladman rummaging through a basket of blueberries and berating a tearful young kitchen helper for throwing out too many.

  “But . . . but . . .” she wailed. “I thought they didn’t look fresh enough.”

  “Are they rotting?” he shouted. “Are the worms eating them? Are they— What do you want?” he snapped at me, his employer.

  What was there, I thought, not for the first time, about these men who cooked professionally that made them so ridiculously temperamental?

  “I don’t want our guests served berries at the point of being bad,” I said.

  “You have money to waste throwing out good food? You’re lucky you didn’t grow up the way I did. We ate what we were given, and we were thankful for it.”

  Now that I knew about this man’s relationship to Elias Theropodous, the resemblance was obvious. Nick was a good bit thinner than his brother, but he had the same height, the same prominent nose, except that Nick’s didn’t show the obvious evidence of drink, the same thinning brown hair, although Elias’s had been professionally styled in an attempt to hide the bald spots.

  “Can you give us a moment, please?” I said to the kitchen helper.

  She was only too glad to flee.

  It was delightfully cool in the cold room, surrounded by pitchers of juice, boxes overflowing with fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs, and a double row of chocolate puddings in small glass bowls. I briefly considered making some extra money renting the place out by the minute to heat-struck guests.

  “It’s your money to waste.” Nick gestured to the berries. “But you’ll be angry at me if my department goes over budget. Not like the butcher’s bill that fraud in the kitchen—”

  “I’m not here to talk about food or even money. Although that berry there, the one on the top, has mold on it.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll serve it to the staff. They’ll never notice.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t serve it to anyone.” I plucked it off the top and tossed it in the trash. I then rummaged through the basket with my hands. “The rest of them look okay. Please don’t cut corners. We don’t need anyone else falling ill here.”

  “If anyone falls ill, it’ll be because the meat isn’t cooked property. I’ve told you—”

  I lifted my right hand. “We’re getting way off topic here, and neither you nor I have time to spare. Tell me about your brother.”

  Something flared behind Nick’s eyes before the shutters slammed down. He picked up an apple and studied it with far more intensity than it deserved. “What brother?”

  “Elias Theropodous. I’ve been told he was your brother.”

  “What of it?”

  “Why didn’t you say something? You know the police have been looking into his death. The staff is talking about little else.”

  “I don’t listen to staff gossip.”

  “You met him in town on Saturday morning. You were overheard arguing.”

  He put down the apple. “If you want to talk to me about the berry supply, Mrs. Grady, we will. But my private life is none of your business. Now, like you said yourself, I have work to do. Lunch service is about to begin.”

  “Your brother died after eating here, at Haggerman’s. The police have been asking questions of our staff and guests. Newspaper reporters have been poking around. People in town have been talking about us, and not favorably. All that makes it the business of this hotel and thus of me.”

  He hesitated. “I hadn’t seen my brother in more than forty years. He never even came to my parents’ funerals, although he sent flowers. Flowers to show us how rich he was, not out of respect. He went away. He became rich and famous. He married beautiful women and bought them beautiful expensive things. I didn’t expect anything from him—we’d never gotten on, even as children—but he could have offered our parents a helping hand as they got old and unable to work so hard.” Nick snorted. “He didn’t. We didn’t have a happy childhood, Mrs. Grady. Our father was a hard man, quick with his fists, and our mother was a weak woman. But they were our parents. After our father died, I wrote to Elias. I told him Mother needed help, that she couldn’t put in the hours cleaning the hotels the way she used to. I did what I could, but I had a family of my own to care for. Do you know how he responded to my plea?”

  I shook my head.

  “He sent me a check for ten dollars.”

  “That’s . . . not much.”

  “Ten dollars over forty years? Barely enough for a meal for two in a fine restaurant in New York City. It was humiliating having to ask for money, even if it was to help our mother in her old age. The amount he sent was intended to be even more humiliating. I had no more contact with him until last week. I heard he and his film people were in Summervale, and he was staying at Kennelwood. As you said, the staff are talking about little else. Elias made no attempt to contact me, which didn’t surprise me. I surprised myself, sending him a note asking him to have breakfast with me on Saturday. He came. He was by himself. I recognized him the minute he walked into the diner. He wore a good suit, a suit that probably cost more than you pay me in a year, and a fancy watch. But it was the same old Elias. Same resentments, as though forty years hadn’t passed and our parents hadn’t died long ago.” He dropped onto a stool.

  “You argued.”

  “Yes. It was a mistake, seeing him. I shouldn’t have—”

  The door creaked open, and the kitchen helper’s head popped in, her eyes wide with trepidation. “Sorry, but I need—”

  “Get out!” Nick roared.

  Her eyes opened wider, she gasped, and the door slammed shut.

  “I’m the older brother,” Nick said. “I should have protected Elias when we were children. But I didn’t. I ran with a hard crowd, and I left him alone to deal with our father and try to look after our mother. He couldn’t do it. So he left them, left us, permanently.”

  I said nothing. Nick twisted his hands together. He’d been a cook in the army in the first war, and his hands were crisscrossed with old scars. A fresh bandage was wrapped around his right thumb. Finally he gave his head a shake and stood up. “I’m sorry our last words were hard ones. I’m sorry we both forgot we’d been brothers once.” He walked past me, opened the door, and disappeared into the hallway.

  I let out a long breath. I hadn’t asked him if he’d killed his brother, or if he’d wanted Elias dead. If Nick had been responsible, he wouldn’t have told me, but that didn’t matter. It wouldn’t have been possible for Nick Timmins, aka Nikos Theropodous, to have poisoned his brother. He hadn’t come into the private dining room or the ballroom on Monday night. He didn’t belong there, and he had no reason to ever go there. If he had come in, I would have seen him. He could have poisoned the food before it was brought out, but he wouldn’t have known which plate was Elias’s at dinner or what he’d choose from the dessert buffet.

  I’d tell Dave Dawson about their relationship, but I was confident Elias’s death had nothing to do with his angry, still bitter brother.

  * * *

  * * *

  I needed to get some work done, but when I walked into the business office, one of the clerks said, “Mr. Westenham was here to see you.”

  “When was that?”

  “Ten, fifteen minutes ago? I told him you’d gone into town. Sorry, I didn’t know you were back. He said he’d pop around to your house and pay a call on Miss Peters and then check back for you.”

  “Thanks. I’ll see if I can find him. If he comes in while I’m gone, ask him to wait, please.”

  Her phone rang, and she swung back to her desk to answer it.

  I found Olivia and Jim relaxing in the shade of our porch with glasses of iced tea in front of them. Winston let out a bark at my approach but didn’t expend the energy required to lumber to his feet. My mother lifted her fan in greeting and gave me a welcoming smile. “Nice to see you in the middle of the day, dear.”

  “I heard you wanted to talk to me,” I said to Jim. I eyed the ice-filled pitcher on the table. “That looks good.”

  Olivia put her fan down and stood up. “I’ll get you a glass.”

  My mother always manages to look cool and dewy-fresh despite the heat. Her lipstick was perfectly applied, her lashes thick with mascara, and not a hair escaped her chignon. Her blue cotton dress didn’t contain the slightest hint of a wrinkle, and sweat didn’t stain the arms or neckline.

  I tried not to adjust my girdle, which was sticking uncomfortably to my hips after the short walk from the hotel. I sat down and leaned back in my chair with a sigh.

  “Having a hard day?” Jim asked.

  “Not particularly. But the heat gets to me sometimes.”

  “Gets to us all,” he said. “Which is why half the population of New York is in the Catskills.”

  “And the other half is planning to come. Thanks.” I accepted a glass from Olivia and poured myself a drink. I took a long grateful sip as she tucked her skirts beneath her and settled back down. She resumed fanning her face.

  “I’m thinking of doing a story about the generational appeal of the Catskills to New York families,” Jim said. “So I thought I’d interview your mother.”

  “In my role as a hotelier,” she said.

  “You’re not working on Elias’s murder?” I asked.

  “I can do two things at once,” he said with a grin. “Truth be told, I can do three things. I made a few phone calls, like you asked me to.”

  “Phone calls? What about?” Olivia asked.

  “Would you mind,” I said, “if I ask you to excuse yourself. It is kinda private.”

  A spark leapt into my mother’s eye. “Private?”

  “Not what you’re thinking. Whatever that might be.”

  The spark faded. “Very well. I’ll be in my room. I have some letters to write.”

  “Before you go, where’s Gloria today?” I asked. “I don’t see any signs of the movie people. Gary told me if he was happy with what they’d done, they’d be finished here. Are they?”

  “For now, at any rate. The director and some others view the raw footage, what they call rushes, to decide if it’s acceptable, and then adjust the filming schedule accordingly. Gloria wasn’t sure if that has been completed yet, or if Gary would be satisfied with what was filmed under Elias’s direction, but they’ve reserved time at some bungalow colony for a few days. One or two small but important scenes with Todd and Rebecca will be shot there. Gloria has no part in those, but she tagged along to watch them setting up today, getting background scenes and shots of extras wandering around. They plan to start filming with the principal actors tomorrow. She’s enjoyed her time here, but she’s looking forward to getting home. I’ve enjoyed having her. It’s great fun to chat about the old days sometimes.”