A Catered Tea Party Read online

  Erin put her hands on her hips. “Do you see him around here?” she asked, jutting out her chin.

  “No,” Bernie allowed, which she thought was odd. She could have sworn she’d seen him near the prop table fiddling around with the Caterpillar’s hookah ten minutes ago.

  “Good, because neither do I,” Erin replied. She turned to Hsaio. “Hurry up so we can start giving out the pierogies.”

  “I’m going, I’m going. No need to be unpleasant,” Hsaio told her.

  “I wasn’t being unpleasant,” Erin countered. “But we need to get this show on the road.”

  “Like I’m not aware of that,” Hsaio huffed as she turned and headed toward the kitchen.

  Great, Bernie thought as she watched Hsaio retreating into the backstage gloom. Now the pierogies will be cold on top of everything else. She peeked out around the curtain. The audience was definitely restless. They were leaning over and talking to one another while they fanned themselves with their playbills. She could hear phrases like “a waste of my time” and “when will this be over?” floating in the air.

  Libby bit at her nail, realized what she was doing, and stopped. “I hope Zalinsky hurries up,” she said.

  “Me too,” Erin agreed, shifting the platter of pierogies from one hand to another so she could pull down her skirt. Every time she moved, the dratted thing rode up. It was extremely annoying.

  “I’ll go see what’s happening,” Bernie offered.

  “Hsaio already went,” Erin pointed out.

  “Maybe she needs help,” Bernie replied. She couldn’t stay still any longer. She had to do something.

  She was halfway to the kitchen when someone screamed.

  Chapter 2

  Bernie’s first thought as she hurried toward the sound was Oh my God. What now? Her second thought was It’s Hsaio screaming. Her third thought was Fantastic. More drama. Just what we don’t need. She didn’t know why Hsaio was screaming, but she did know it wasn’t because she’d seen a mouse.

  Absolutely nothing had gone smoothly since she and Libby had taken this job. Nothing. And this was going to have been such an easy gig too. Simple as pie, Casper had said. A piece of cake. A chance for you to shine. Get some new business. Get in on the ground floor. You could become the go-to caterer for all the events at The Blue House. Etc. Etc. Etc. Yeah, right.

  But how was she to have known things would turn out this way? Seriously, how hard could catering a community theater post-production party of Alice in Wonderland be? At least that’s what she and Libby had thought. Some fancy scones with clotted cream and strawberries, a variety of crustless sandwiches of the cucumber and cream cheese variety, a summer pudding, different kinds of tea, both hot and iced, a little May wine, some sort of punch—in other words, a riff on a classic English high tea—and they were done. What they hadn’t counted on was Zalinsky.

  He’d turned out to be the proverbial client from hell. Of course, she and Libby hadn’t known that when they’d taken the job. Neither had Casper, for that matter. If he had, he never would have signed on to direct this fiasco. When she and her sister had spoken to Zalinsky and presented their menu, he’d been positively enthusiastic. He’d thought an English high tea was a great idea. Brilliant was the word he’d used. But then as the weeks passed, he’d changed his mind about as often as Imelda Marcos changed her shoes. By the time they were done, the menu was a complete mishmash.

  There was sushi (in deference to Zalinsky’s precious Yixing teapot—never mind that the teapot was Chinese and sushi was Japanese), cucumber sandwiches, and a sprinkling of Polish dishes with unpronounceable names that Zalinsky had insisted on adding to the menu. To honor his mother’s memory, he’d said—never mind that his mother was Irish. At least, that’s what Casper Cumberbatch had told her. Individually the dishes were all fine, except for the headcheese, of course. But together? Together, they induced acute indigestion.

  At that point, she and Libby would have backed out of the whole thing, except for the fact that they’d already signed a contract and Zalinsky had threatened to sue them for breach of it if they opted out. Libby had said he was bluffing, but Bernie was pretty sure he would have followed through on his threat. Evidently he had a history of drowning people in legal actions, which was one of the reasons Casper hadn’t up and left.

  At least that’s what Casper had told her. Bernie sighed. Too bad she hadn’t researched Zalinsky before they’d taken the job. In her defense, though, she’d never had to deal with this kind of situation before. But if she had it bad, Casper had had it worse. He had to deal with Zalinsky twenty-four/seven. If Zalinsky wasn’t at the theater, he was calling Casper to discuss one of his ideas—all of which were terrible. It seemed as if nothing was immune from Zalinsky’s meddling. Zalinsky had cast the play, pretty much rewritten it, and designed the set. It was the ultimate vanity piece.

  To Bernie’s mind, a perfect example of Zalinsky’s meddling was Zalinsky insisting that the table where the tea party was going to take place be placed front and center on the stage. This was despite the fact that the tea party scene didn’t happen until act one, scene five. But when Casper had pointed that out to Zalinsky, Zalinsky had called him a cretin and told him to get over himself. Everyone, he’d said, was coming to see the teapot. And maybe they were. Maybe Zalinsky was correct. Still, there was such a thing as being civil, a concept Zalinksy didn’t adhere to. He just wanted what he wanted and used any means at his disposal to get it.

  When she and Libby had argued with him about serving pierogies at the tea party, Zalinsky had gotten red in the face and told them they were morons and their food sucked. But when Libby had told him he had no sense of taste, he’d clutched his chest and told them they were giving him a heart attack. Libby actually thought he was having one, so she had apologized, at which point Zalinsky had told her he’d do whatever he wanted and he could do without her suggestions, thank you very much.

  So when Zalinsky had decided that not only were pierogies going to be served for the tea but that Erin (aka Alice) was going to serve them to the audience as well, neither she nor Libby had uttered a peep. Pierogies! At an English tea! The thought still made Bernie shudder. As Casper had said, “It’s enough to make one blush with shame.” Which was only a slight exaggeration, in Bernie’s mind.

  Bernie sighed as she recalled the events of the past weeks. But wasn’t that always the way? The things you thought were going to be hard were easy, and the things you thought were going to be easy turned out to be hard. At least her biggest nightmare hadn’t happened. The food critic for the New York Times hadn’t come. He’d sent his regrets instead. Evidently, he’d been invited to something more exciting in the Hamptons. Thank God for small favors. Their shop, A Little Taste of Heaven, would never have lived down the embarrassment.

  Bernie pursed her lips as she recalled Zalinsky’s temper tantrums, his clutching his chest and telling everyone they were giving him a heart attack when he didn’t get his way. There had been no detail too small to escape Zalinsky’s notice. The man didn’t micromanage, he nanomanaged, which had built up a tremendous amount of resentment on the part of the cast and the crew.

  Witness the scene in the lounge before the production had started. Bernie could smell the tension in the air when she and her sister had walked in. Everyone in the cast looked angry, while Casper looked as if he wanted to do a Cheshire Cat and fade into the sofa.

  Erin Kenwood had been sitting next to him on the sofa, facing the door. She was wearing her Alice in Wonderland getup, a light-blue, knee-length dress, a frilly white apron, white knee-length socks, and black patent-leather shoes. A black velvet hair band was holding back her long blond hair. When she looked up, Bernie could see that her mascara and eyeliner were smudged. Erin’s been crying, she remembered thinking.

  Jason Pancetta, the March Hare, was sitting on the second sofa, alternately glowering at Zalinsky and swinging his pocket watch back and forth, while Hsaio Rosenthal was curled up on the sofa in h
er Dormouse costume, looking terrified. The next two members of the cast, Stan and George Holloway (aka Tweedledee and Tweedledum), were both leaning against the far wall.

  Bernie remembered thinking that the costumes Zalinsky had chosen for them, tight T-shirts and vests and stripped knickers, must have been an act of revenge for some imagined slight—like maybe killing Zalinsky’s best friend. The last member of the company, Magda Webster, who was Zalinsky’s administrative assistant and the putative Queen of Hearts, looked as if she wanted to rake her long, red fingernails across Zalinsky’s chest.

  And then there had been the scene. Zalinsky had wanted to make yet another change, and she and everyone else had jumped in and told Zalinsky it wasn’t possible, and he’d gotten really, really angry. Angry to the point where he’d stalked over to the coffee table and swept the vase filled with Erin’s red roses onto the floor. Then he’d snarled at Erin to clean the mess up. If looks could kill, Zalinsky would have been dead.

  But Zalinsky hadn’t cared. Instead he’d railed at everyone. Bernie remembered his rant. “So this is what I get for trying to be nice,” he’d screamed. “This is what I get for building you this lounge and furnishing it with top-of-the-line furniture.” Then he’d ended with, “You people are going to be the death of me yet,” and stomped off.

  “From your mouth to God’s ear,” Bernie couldn’t help remembering Casper whispering to Erin after Zalinsky had left.

  It looks as if Casper has had his way, Bernie thought when she reached the kitchen and saw Zalinsky crumpled up on the floor, his arms outstretched, his hat covering his face. Zalinsky’s favorite mug lay on the floor near his left foot, which was resting in a small puddle of liquid. Probably his tea, Bernie thought because that was all Zalinsky ever drank. He must have dropped it when he collapsed.

  Bernie wrinkled her nose. The smell of something burnt lingered in the air. She watched Hsaio standing over Zalinsky, shrieking loud enough to wake the dead. Only in this case, Bernie didn’t think there was going to be a resurrection. She’d just had time to register the fact that Zalinsky wasn’t mostly dead, he was completely dead, when the two security guards who had been on the stage brushed her aside, slamming her into a wall as they rushed into the room.

  It wasn’t until an hour later, when the confusion had died down, that she and Libby realized that the two-million-dollar teapot was gone as well. So much for hiring security guards, Bernie had thought when she saw the empty spot on the table where the teapot had been.

  Chapter 3

  “I didn’t say that,” Casper protested to Sean, Libby, and Bernie.

  A week had gone by since Zalinsky’s death. It was three in the afternoon, and the four of them were sitting in the Simmonses’ flat above A Little Taste of Heaven. Casper was stirring another lump of sugar into his iced green mint tea, while Sean was finishing off a piece of blueberry pie.

  “Yeah, you did Casper,” Libby said as she flicked a crumb of crust off her lap.

  “Okay,” Casper admitted, backtracking, “maybe I did say from your mouth to God’s ear, but that doesn’t mean I killed him . . .”

  “. . . and stole the teapot,” Libby added.

  Casper gave her the evil eye. “Don’t be absurd.”

  “I’m just repeating what the police are saying,” Libby told him.

  Casper put his cup down. “What the police are alleging. Alleging. I didn’t steal the damned thing. Why would I do something like that?”

  Libby supplied the obvious answer. “Because the teapot is worth two million dollars.”

  “Only to the right people,” Casper retorted, “and they’re above my pay grade. It’s not the sort of thing you can pawn. They should talk to Hsaio. She’s the one who knows about that world.”

  “She’s getting a PhD in art education,” Bernie objected. “That’s quite a bit different.”

  Casper blotted the sweat off his face with a napkin. “But she still knows more about that world than I do. The police should look at her.”

  Bernie ate a raspberry. “They looked at everyone,” she told Casper.

  “They should look harder,” Casper cried.

  “They’ve pretty much settled on you,” Sean informed him. “At least that’s what Clyde tells me.” Clyde was Sean’s friend and a member of the Longely police force.

  “Lovely,” Casper muttered. “Wonderful. First that hell of a play, and now this.” He looked up at the ceiling and put his hands together. “Will my trials never end, oh Lord?”

  Bernie rolled her eyes. “Oh please!”

  “But this is so unfair,” Casper protested. “Everyone in the cast hated Zalinsky. You know they did.”

  “Yes, but not everyone had to spend as much time with him as you did,” Libby pointed out. “Not everyone was about to have their professional career destroyed because of him.”

  “That’s a slight exaggeration,” Casper protested.

  “Is it?” Libby asked. “I heard he was going to get rid of you . . .”

  Casper interrupted. “Well, you heard wrong. I was the one who was leaving.”

  “Remember, you told me you couldn’t get out of your contract,” Bernie said.

  “I said no such thing,” Casper countered.

  Libby continued with what she’d been saying. “Be that as it may, you were about to be reviewed by the drama critic of the New York Times. If the food critic had been at the play, I would have slit my wrists. Zalinsky’s death stopped the play.”

  “He never came,” Casper said.

  “But you didn’t know that,” Sean pointed out.

  “Do you really think I’d kill someone so I wouldn’t get a bad review?” Casper demanded.

  “People have killed for less,” Sean told him. “And then there’s the other stuff.”

  Casper put his glass down, sloshing the tea over the side onto the table. He wiped it up with a napkin Bernie handed him. “I’ve explained that. I mean if the police want to go after anyone they should go after Erin. If she had had a gun, she would have shot Zalinsky when he threw her roses on the floor. I’m surprised she didn’t punch him. She sure looked like she wanted to.”

  Bernie and Libby remained silent.

  Casper leaned forward. “She did,” he insisted. He appealed to Bernie. “For that matter, you and your sister hated him just as much as I did.”

  “I’m not saying we didn’t,” Bernie replied. “But none of us threatened him. None of us left a note on his kitchen table that said, ‘You’ll get yours.’”

  “I did not write that note,” Casper cried.

  “Then who did?” Libby asked. “It was on your letterhead.”

  “The person who wrote it is the person who is setting me up,” Casper said. “Anyone could have gotten my stationery and printed it out on the computer. In fact,” he leaned forward, warming to his subject, “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Zalinsky himself. It would be just like him to do this to me.”

  Bernie raised her eyebrows. “Seriously?” she asked.

  Casper balled up his fists. “Would I have written that note if I intended to kill him?” he said. “Would I be that stupid? Give me some credit.”

  “Obviously someone thinks you are that stupid,” Sean said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have sent an anonymous note to the chief of police the day after Zalinsky died.”

  Casper seized on the word anonymous. “If there was any credence to that note, whoever wrote it would have signed their name.”

  “The police aren’t seeing it that way,” Bernie said, thinking of what her dad had said about what Lucy, their chief of police, had said.

  Casper crossed his arms over his chest. “This is nothing more than a scurrilous attack on me by a person of low moral character,” he protested.

  “Unfortunately, the police don’t go by a gentleman’s code of honor these days,” Sean said dryly. “I think the days of dueling are gone.”

  “I come here for support, and I get the opposite,” Casper said dolefully. He s
tarted to get up. “I thought you were my friend,” he told Bernie, his voice brimming with indignation. “I thought you were going to help me.”

  “We are,” Bernie told him. “Now, sit back down.”

  “Well, it sure doesn’t sound that way to me,” Casper said sulkily, but he sat down anyway.

  Bernie leaned forward. “You need to calm down. My dad and I are just repeating what the police are saying. We’re laying out their case so we can counter it.”

  Casper scowled. “The police are morons,” he retorted. “Heaven preserve me from fools and vipers.”

  Bernie noticed that he’d started jiggling his right leg up and down. “That may be,” Bernie said. “But here’s the thing. You weren’t where you were supposed to be right before Zalinsky died, and when you add that in to everything else . . .” Bernie put her hands out, spread her fingers, and shrugged. “Well . . .”

  “I already explained that,” Casper cried. “I was in the bathroom.”

  Libby added a dollop of cream to the top of her pie. “Unfortunately, no one saw you.”

  Casper looked indignant. “So now I have to tell everyone when I have to go off to the potty to poop? I need a witness?”

  “In this case, it might have been a good idea,” Libby said.

  “No one could have seen me anyway,” Casper retorted. “It was dark backstage. It’s always dark backstage when a performance is going on. You know that.”

  Libby nodded her head. It was true.

  Casper smacked the arm of the chair he was sitting in with the flat of his hand. “I can’t believe this is happening to me,” he moaned. “And my astrologer said this was going to be a good month. I’m going to fire him, the nincompoop.” Casper waved his hands in the air. “I feel as if I’m in the middle of a bad movie written by a Hitchcock wannabe.”

  Sean put his fork down on his plate. “The thing is,” he told Casper, “you could have gone in and substituted the hot-wired teakettle during the time you said you were in the john.”