CHAPTER 8
It hadn’t taken any kind of master thief to make off with Poochie’s prized Gullwing. There was no security system at Four Chimneys to bypass or disarm. The garage door was unlocked. So was the Gullwing itself.
In fact, Poochie’s keys had been in the ignition.
“You’re kidding me,” Des responded in disbelief when Claudia Widdifield told her the key thing.
“I wish I were,” Claudia snapped, her cheeks mottling with anger as they stood in the courtyard outside of the garage. It was a damp morning. Four Chimneys was shrouded in the dense fog that hugged the Connecticut River. “Mother always leaves her keys there.”
“Mr. Tolliver is supposed to be doing the driving now,” Des reminded her.
“And he is. But Tolly does as Mother asks.” A sheaf of insurance paperwork was clutched in Claudia’s trembling right hand. “She chooses to keep her keys there so she won’t lose them-or so she claims.”
Claudia was the one who’d phoned it in. She’d provided the 911 responder with the fivedigit license plate number that Connecticut issued to antique cars. The particulars would be out to all troopers and municipal police departments by now. If the thief tried to drive it anywhere in the state, it would be spotted soon enough.
“I keep telling her she needs proper security,” Claudia said, gazing into the vast fourcar garage. Her own Lexus SUV was in there. Nothing else except for a stack of firewood and an old red Radio Flyer wagon. “Maybe now she’ll listen to me. What am I saying? She never listens to me.” Claudia wore a pale blue cashmere sweater set and navy pinstriped slacks today. Des wondered if she ever tumbled out of bed and threw on a pair of jeans. Or if she even owned a pair of jeans. “By the way, Trooper, can we keep this out of the media? Because I don’t wish to advertise to every criminal in the northeast that we’re running an allyoucaneat buffet here.”
“We can try.”
“Thank you.” She glanced at Des uneasily. “Perhaps now you can understand why I feel it’s so imperative to have more legal control.”
“I understood you just fine yesterday, Mrs. Widdifield. Right now, I’m here to file a stolen car report.”
Claudia handed over the paperwork she’d been clutching.
“Who discovered that it was gone?”
“Mother did.”
“Any idea who might have taken it?”
“Those damned Kershaw boys did. You know that perfectly well.”
Des didn’t touch that. Just wrote down the information she needed.
“Eric was expecting them to show up for work this morning,” Claudia went on. “Instead, they took off in mother’s Gullwing. It’s painfully obvious.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?” Des handed the paperwork back to her. “May I speak with your mother now?”
Claudia led her inside through the laundry room. A stereo system was blasting Mel Torme backed up by a big band of at least eighty trumpets. Claudia immediately darted into the parlor to shut it off.
“Hey, who turned down my morning music?!” roared Poochie from the kitchen, where she was filling up the entire house with the aroma of frying bacon.
“The trooper’s here!” Claudia called in response.
“Get your body in here, Des-breakfast’s on!”
It was a huge kitchen with a long farmhouse table parked in its center. There were two ovens, a sixburner range, cupboards and counters everywhere-plus a walkin butler’s pantry with its own sink and counters. A bay window looked out across a meadow to the river. Bailey was dozing in the window seat. Poochie had two castiron skillets going. One had four thick slices of bacon sizzling in it, the other hash browns with sauteed onions.
As Des walked in, Poochie snatched a third skillet from the hanging rack overhead and lit a burner under it, her movements swift and expert. She seemed amazingly peppy and chipper under the circumstances. Almost defiantly so.
By comparison, Guy Tolliver looked positively comatose slumped there at the table in his maroon silk bathrobe and striped pajamas. Tolly was unshaven and uncombed. His color was not good, not unless gray was considered good.
“How do you take your eggs, dear?” Poochie slapped a pat of butter into the third pan to melt. Here she differed from Des’s mom, who always cooked her eggs in bacon fat.
“I’m a little tight for time, Poochie.”
“Nonsense. They’re fresh from Eric’s chicken house. Danielle just brought them over, dear thing. She’s so sweet.”
“I don’t trust her,” Tolly muttered, sipping his coffee shakily. “Sure, she’s got that earthy, sheep manure between the toes thing going on, but the woman is too good to be true.”
Poochie lifted the cooked bacon from its pan and laid it on a paper towel. “Des, I don’t mean to throw my weight around but you will eat. Now sit!”
Des sat. Clearly, Poochie wouldn’t cooperate with her otherwise. Besides, Poochie Vickers did happen to be a great American chef.
“My Smith classmate, Maddie Barnes, sends me one of these every month from her farm in Putney, Vermont.” Poochie whacked a brisketsized slab of bacon down on the massive butcher block next to the stove and handcut four more slices. “It’s honestly smoked from her very own hogs. Best I’ve ever had. Now how would you like your eggs, Des?”
“Sunnyside up. Two, please.”
Poochie cracked a pair of eggs into the hot pan and started the strips of bacon she’d just sliced. Then she spooned some of the crisp hash browns onto a plate along with the bacon that had been draining. By then, Des’s eggs were done. She slid them onto the plate and put it in front of her. “Dig in, dear.”
Not surprisingly, everything tasted amazing. “You run a pretty fair diner here, Poochie.”
“God, I’d love nothing better,” she laughed, delighted by the compliment. “We could call it Pooch’s. Have tons of marvelously ghastly dog art everywhere. Claudia could wait tables. Wouldn’t you like that, Claude?”
“Mummy, please,” protested Claudia, who stood before the window with her arms crossed.
“You’re not eating, Mrs. Widdifield?” Des asked.
“Claude never eats my cooking,” Poochie said as she turned the sizzling bacon. “Afraid I’ll poison her. I have four bestselling cookbooks to my name. Why, they’ve even called me a doyenne. And, trust me, not just anyone can be a doyenne. You have to be very knowledgeable and very old.”
“I’m watching my cholesterol,” Claudia explained tightly.
“You keep on watching it, dear. Believe me, no man is.”
Tolly let out a hoot at this.
“Trooper Mitry is very busy,” Claudia said between gritted teeth. “She is trying to get your Gullwing back.”
Poochie waved her off. “Not to worry, it’ll be returned by nightfall. This community is filled with good, honest people.”
“You should really think about upping your security around here, Poochie.”
“Nonsense. I won’t live in a highsecurity prison. And I assure you that my Gullwing will be returned. There’s really no need for you to get involved. Not that I’m not glad to see you on this fine morning.”
“Were you awake when it happened?”
“I was,” Poochie acknowledged. “I’m up doing my calisthenics at fivethirty every morning. And Bailey needs his morning constitutional, or he’ll turn into an arthritic lump.”
“Were you up, too, Mr. Tolliver?”
“God, no. I haven’t been up that early since I was a Marine in Korea.”
“Golly, I bet you looked cute in your uniform,” Poochie teased him.
“As butch as all getout.”
“Today’s recycling day,” Poochie said. “Bailey and I marched our cans and bottles for old Pete down to the road in my Radio Flyer. Claude’s as well, since she doesn’t like to go out in public that early. Afraid someone will
