Gunpowder Green

suddenly hitting a fever pitch.

Doe waited until they were both seated and was positive no one was in earshot before she began. “I came back to apologize,” she said. “Giovanni is still very touchy about Oliver’s death, and he often overreacts rather badly. But you have to understand, he was so very fond of his cousin.”

“Second cousin,” said Theodosia, watching Doe closely, wondering what the real agenda was.

“Yes, of course,” said Doe as she picked a tiny fleck of lint from the sleeve of her perfect buttercup yellow sweater. “But the two of them were extremely close. Giovanni’s mother died when he was very young, and Oliver was always like an older brother to him.”

“I’m sure he was,” said Theodosia, wondering again why Doe had come back. Her apology didn’t seem all that heartfelt.

Then Doe leaned forward across the small wooden table and her taffy-colored hair swung closely about her face. “Frankly, I think Giovanni was upset because I told him about Ford Cantrell and me,” she said.

Now it was Theodosia’s turn to lean forward, the better to catch every word.

“Ford and I met a few years ago at the University of Charleston,” explained Doe. “He was a grad student in computer engineering, and I was a Tri Delt pledge.” She stopped and smiled wistfully at Theodosia. “Were you ever in a sorority?”

Theodosia stared at Doe. “No,” she said. “Best time of my life,” she declared. “Anyway, Ford and I dated a few times, and then I broke it off.”

“Don’t look now, but it’s the prom queen again,” Haley muttered under her breath.

“You dated Ford Cantrell?” Theodosia said in a loud whisper.

Doe frowned, as though she were unused to any type of critical remark. “Honestly, Theodosia, it was no big deal.” She shrugged. “I said I broke it off. If you ask me, Ford Cantrell has never accepted being rejected.”

“She dated him?” Drayton tucked his chin down and stared over his glasses. His right eyebrow twitched crazily; he did not look amused. “You’re making this up,” he finally declared in a flat voice. “In a brazen attempt to completely muddle my poor mind.”

Theodosia shook her head. “Doe told me so herself.”

“Is that what you two were whispering about?” said Haley. “A date she had with Ford Cantrell in college? Hmm, she certainly holds herself in high regard, doesn’t she?”

“I think she was just trying to explain why Giovanni got so upset when I started talking about Ford Cantrell this morning,” said Theodosia. “In her own way, Doe was trying to be nice.”

“She’s got a funny way of being nice,” grumbled Haley.

“Indeed she has,” agreed Drayton.

Theodosia was inclined to agree with them, if the whole situation hadn’t been so bizarre. Bizarre bordering on Rip-ley’s Believe It or Not!

And when you tried to look at Oliver Dixon’s murder from the standpoint of pure motive, it was also terribly confusing.

Ford Cantrell supposedly harbored a grudge against Oliver Dixon, yet he’d worked for the man as a consultant. Ford had motive only if you took into account the long-standing family feud and their somewhat strange business arrangement, which could have been far from amicable.

Booth Crowley and Billy Manolo had both handled the antique pistol minutes before Oliver Dixon was killed by it.

Both men impressed Theodosia as being short-tempered and snappish.

But as far as motive went, the only connection Billy Manolo seemed to have to Oliver Dixon was through the yacht club and as an ironworker, possibly creating some decorative wrought-iron pieces for Doe and Oliver’s home via the Popple Hill people.

Would you kill someone because he might have criticized the scrollwork on your garden gate? She didn’t think so.

Booth Crowley was a suspect by virtue of his peripheral connections. He’d handed the pistol to Oliver just moments before he was killed and had put up most of the money for Grapevine. On the other hand, if Oliver Dixon had somehow gotten wind that Booth Crowley was going to shut the company down, he might have been forced to retaliate. That was a theory that certainly warranted more investigating.

As far as Doe Belvedere Dixon was concerned... well, Theodosia wasn’t sure where Doe fit into the equation, other than the fact that she stood to inherit a lot of money.

Of course, to make things all the more confusing, Ford Cantrell, Booth Crowley, Oliver Dixon, and Billy Manolo were all members of the same yacht club. Well, Billy worked there, but he was still at the club a lot of the time.

So what did all that information add up to? As far as Theodosia was concerned, it totaled a big fat zero.

Puttering about the tearoom for the rest of the day, Theodosia fretted about her inability to draw any kind of conclusion. She was unwilling to let it go by the time evening rolled around and she found herself upstairs with Earl Grey in her little apartment.

As though Earl Grey had psychically picked up on her restlessness and disquietude, the dog paced about the apartment, toenails clicking against kitchen tile and hardwood floors.

They’d already taken their evening walk through the historic district. Starting on Church Street, they’d jogged up Water Street, then wended their way down Meeting Street to The Battery. After Earl Grey had romped in the park, they’d even walked home past the Stewart home on Lam-boll Street, where Billy Manolo, according to Delaine, had supposedly created tons of wrought iron to enclose their backyard garden.

And still Theodosia was restless.

What to do? she wondered. Take another walk? Sip some chamomile tea? Fix a tisane of Saint-John’s-wort to calm me down?

No, she finally decided, there was something far better that she could do. She could put it all down on paper. Or rather, computer. She would compose and organize her thoughts, making notations if she was seriously bothered by any glaring facts or strange coincidences. Then she could hit a single key and E-mail the whole shebang to Detective Burt Tidwell. She could put him on the same page with her, so to speak. Get him alerted to or caught up on all the details. After all, she told herself, two heads were better than one. And from the looks of things, her head seemed to have borne the brunt of worrying about Oliver Dixon’s death these last nine days. Not even Oliver’s wife, Doe, seemed to think the accident hadn’t really been an accident.

That resolved, Theodosia sat down at her computer and began the task of putting it all down.

The writing and rewriting took her a good while. But when she was finished and the information sent, it felt like a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. And Theodosia, sleepy at last, padded into her cream- colored bedroom and slid into bed between indigo cotton sheets that were cool and feather light and infinitely conducive to pleasant dreams.

Chapter 24

“Theodosia? It’s Bernard Morrow.”

Clenching the phone tighter, Theodosia straightened up in her chair. “Professor Morrow, hello. I’ve been hoping to hear from you.” She glanced out across the tearoom. Haley was sliding gracefully between the small tables with a tray that held samples of their new South African Redbush tea. Drayton was chatting with two regulars who came in every Tuesday morning, dressed to the nines and wearing hats and gloves. Sunlight streamed in through the heavy, leaded panes, lending a shimmering glow to everything. With the morning’s sunlight came a ray of hope as well.

“Yes, well, I meant to get your little project dispatched with sooner,” said Professor Morrow, “but I’ve been serving on this confounded academic search committee. Everyone on it worries endlessly about adding new, untenured faculty to the department and pontificates over their own specialized area. All in all, it gives you the sense that your career is drawing to a close, and it’s time to take a final bow.”