Death By Darjeeling

Samantha smiled sadly. “We made our acquaintance at the Heritage Society. He was a new board member. I was...”

She was about to say long-term member but quickly changed her answer.

“I was Lamplighter chairperson.”

Theodosia nodded. It made sense. Samantha was always doing what was proper or decorous or neighborly. Even if she sometimes added her own special twist.

The two women walked into the church and stood at the rear overlooking the many rows of pews.

Samantha nudged Theodosia with an elbow. “I understand,” Samantha whispered, “that woman in the first row is Hughes Barron’s cousin.” She nodded toward the back of a woman wearing a mustard-colored coat. “Lucille Dunn from North Carolina.”

The woman sat alone, head bowed. “That’s the only relative?” Theodosia asked.

“So far as I know,” Samantha whispered, then tottered up the aisle, for she had already spotted someone else she wanted to chat with.

Slipping into one of the back pews, Theodosia sat quietly as the organ continued to thunder. From her vantage point, she could now study the funeral attendees. She saw several members of the Heritage Society, the lawyer, Sam Sestero, and a man who looked like an older Xerox copy, probably the brother, Edward, of Sestero & Sestero. There was Lleveret Dante, dressed conservatively in brown instead of a flashy white suit. And Burt Tidwell. She might have known.

But no Timothy Neville. And no Tanner Joseph.

The service was simple and oddly sad. A gunmetal gray coffin draped in black crepe, a minister who talked of resurrection and salvation but allowed as to how he had never really acquainted himself with Hughes Barron.

Struck by melancholy, Theodosia wondered who would attend her funeral, should she meet an early and untimely end. Aunt Libby, Drayton, Haley, Bethany, Samantha, Delaine, Angie and Mark Congdon of the Featherbed House, probably Father Jonathan, and some of her old advertising cronies.

How about Jory Davis? Would he crowd in with the other mourners? Would he remember her fondly? Should she call and invite him to dinner?

Theodosia was still lost in thought when the congregation launched into its final musical tribute, a slightly off-key rendition of “Amazing Grace.”

As was tradition at funeral services, the mourners in the front rose first and made their way down the aisle, while those folks in the back kept the singing going as best they could. That, of course, put Theodosia at the very end of the line for expressing condolences to Hughes Barron’s only relative, Lucille Dunn.

She stood in the nave of the church, a small woman with watery blue eyes, pale skin and brownish blond hair worn in a tired shag style. The mustard color of her coat did not complement her skin tone and only served to make her appear more faded and worn out.

“You were a friend?” Lucille Dunn asked, her red-rimmed eyes focused on a point somewhere over Theodosia’s right shoulder.

“Yes, I was.” Theodosia managed an appropriately pained expression.

“A close friend?” Lucille Dunn’s pale blue eyes suddenly honed in on Theodosia sharply.

Lord, thought Theodosia, where is this conversation going?

“We had been close.” Close at the hour of his death, thought Theodosia, then was immediately struck by a pang of guilt. Here I am, she told herself guiltily, lying to the relative of a dead man. And on the day of his funeral. She glanced into the dark recess of the church, almost fearful that a band of enraged angels might be advancing upon her.

Lucille Dunn reached out her small hand to clutch Theodosia’s hand. “If there’s anything you’d like from the condo, a memento or keepsake, be sure to...” The cousin finished with a tight grimace, and her whole body seemed to sag. Then her eyes turned hard. “Angelique won’t want anything. She didn’t even bother flying back for the funeral.”

“Angelique?” Theodosia held her breath.

“His wife. Estranged wife. She’s off in Provence doing God knows what.” Lucille Dunn daubed at her nose with a tissue. “Heartless,” she whispered.

From a short distance away, Lleveret Dante made small talk with two commercial realtors while he kept his dark eyes squarely focused on the woman with the curly auburn hair. It was the same woman he’d seen acting suspiciously, trying to stake him out at Sam Sestero’s office. The same one he’d followed back to that tea shop. And now, like a bad penny, she’d turned up again. Theodosia Browning.

Oh, yes, he knew exactly who she was. He enjoyed an extensive network of informants and tipsters. Highly advantageous. Especially when you needed to learn the contents of a sealed bid or there was an opportunity to undercut a competitor. His sources had informed him that the Browning woman had been in the garden the night his ex-partner, Hughes Barron, had died. Wasn’t that so very interesting? The question was, what was she suspicious about? Obviously something, because she’d been snooping around. She and that overbearing fool, Tidwell. Well, the hell with them. Just let them try to put a move on him. He knew how to play hardball. Hell, in his younger days, he’d done jail time.

Gravel crunched loudly on the parking lot surface behind her, and Theodosia was aware of heavy, nasal breathing. It had to be Tidwell coming to speak with her, and she was in no mood for a verbal joust.

She spun around. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. She knew she was being rude, but she didn’t care.

“Keeping an eye out,” Tidwell replied mildly. He pulled a small packet of Sen-Sen out of his jacket pocket, shook out a piece and stuck the packet back in his pocket without bothering to offer any to her.

“You should keep an eye on him.” Theodosia nodded sharply toward Lleveret Dante. Down the line of cars, Dante had pulled himself apart from a small cluster of people and was hoisting himself up into a chocolate brown Range Rover. Theodosia noted that the SUV was tricked out ridiculously with every option known to man. Grill guard, fog lights, roof rack, the works.

Tidwell didn’t even try to hide his smirk. “There’s enough people keeping an eye on him. It’s the quiet ones I worry about.”

Quiet like Bethany, Theodosia thought angrily. “When are you going to get off Bethany’s case?” she demanded. “The more you continue to harass her, the more you look like a rank amateur.”

Bert Tidwell guffawed loudly.

“Oh, Theo!” a voice tinkled merrily.

Theodosia and Bert Tidwell both looked around to see Samantha bearing down upon them. “What is it, Samantha?” “I was going to ride with Tandy and George Bostwick,

but they’re going to go out to Magnolia Cemetery, and I need to get back for an appointment. Can you be a dear and give me a lift? Just a few blocks over, drop me near your shop?” she inquired breathlessly.

“Of course, Samantha. I’d be delighted.” And without a fare-thee-well to Burt Tidwell, Theodosia wrenched open the passenger door for Samantha, then stalked around the rear of her Jeep and climbed in.

“What was that all about?” Samantha asked as she fastened her seatbelt, plopped her purse atop the center console, and ran a quick check of her lipstick in the rearview mirror.

Theodosia turned the key in the ignition and gunned the engine. “That was Bert Tidwell being a boor.” She double-clutched from first into third, and the Jeep lurched ahead. “Thanks for the rescue.”

“It is you who . . . Oh, Theodosia!” cried Samantha with great consternation as the Jeep careened onto the curb, swished perilously close to an enormous clump of tea olive trees, then swerved back onto the street again. “Kindly restrain yourself. I am in no way ready for one of your so-called off-road experiences!”

Chapter 32

By the time she dropped Samantha at Church Street and Wentworth, Lucille Dunn’s words, “If there’s anything you’d like from the condo, a keepsake, a memento,” were echoing feverishly in her brain. So Theodosia