The Lavender Teacup Read online

  “Besides,” Teddy said, stretching his arms up to lace his hands behind his head and display his triceps, “Taylor is old enough to be my mother.”

  “She’s still pretty hot,” Lily said. “You said so yourself. She’s just not that into you, and you don’t like to have women around unless they’re crazy about you. You should call Purity, Ed. She’d keep Teddy busy and happy for the entire shoot. She’d be good for his ego, and as we all know, his ego carries the show.”

  “Taylor is more precise,” Ed said, finally coming to the contact photo of a green-eyed blond, who was allowing a German Shepherd to slide its tongue up the side of her face – and laughing about it. “Taylor is a natural, although Purity would be easier to handle. Taylor still insists on denying her psychic gifts.” He stopped and considered. Then he shook his head. “No. Taylor. I always get results with Taylor.”

  “You always get results with Purity, too,” Teddy said.

  “I mean real results.”

  Lily flopped onto her back again. “Good. I like Taylor. Purity’s so girly and sweet she makes my teeth ache. But do you really think you can get Taylor to come? She’s got the animal shelter to run, and I know for a fact that she hates to travel. She’s happy on her estate. Everything she needs is there. The shelter. A big old mansion. A gorgeous view. Michael.” She sighed suggestively after saying the name of Taylor’s lover.

  “He’s old,” Teddy said.

  “He’s not that old, and he’s hot. Those electric-blue eyes.”

  “Aw, babe, you’re just teasing me now,” Teddy said, sitting forward and leering at her. “You know my eyes are what made you fall for me. Even you can’t describe the exact shade of green, and you’ve been gazing into them for a couple of years now. Blue eyes are so . . . cold. Green eyes are as warm and caressing as a balmy summer breeze – and so much more mysterious.”

  Lily turned her head so she could look at him. “You know, your eyes really are intoxicating. They look great on camera. That mixed-up, misty green with the dark blue ring around it, and those black, black eyelashes.”

  Teddy smiled, slowly, invitingly. “Ed,” he said as an aside, “are you finished yet? I think you can leave now.”

  “Hello, Taylor?” Ed said into the cellphone, turning away from the other two.

  “Yes, Ed,” Lily said, talking to his back as he talked into the cellphone. “I’m exhausted from the drive. Why don’t you go get settled in your own room. You went straight to the antique shop when we got here. Don’t you want to take a shower and have a nap?”

  Ed, oblivious, was talking tensely into the phone and beginning to gesture dramatically with his free hand.

  Teddy was still gazing suggestively at Lily, and she turned to him. She smiled. Then she said, “You too, Tedders. Out!”

  “You don’t mean that. I could rub your back for you,” Teddy said, inching closer.

  She smiled. “I thought we got this straight when I agreed to come back to the company. I’ll work with you, and for reasons I still can’t figure out, I still like you on some level – a really dopey, maybe even self-destructive level – but we are not a couple anymore. Really. It’s over. I made that very clear, and you said you could accept it. Should I have the lawyer draft an addendum to my contract spelling it out, or will we just behave like the dedicated professionals that we are and pull together another hard-driving episode of the show America loves so well?”

  “But Taylor, you have to come,” Ed said into the phone desperately. “People are dying.”

  Teddy was still gazing hopefully at Lily. “We don’t really need separate rooms, do we?”

  Lily sat up on the edge of the bed and brought her face closer to his. “Do I have to physically throw you both out of here, or will you go quietly?”

  “Physically?” he murmured. “You can try.”

  “Teddy. Get out. Now.”

  He lifted a black, black eyebrow, thought it over, then decided to bide his time. “You know where my room is,” he said. At the doorway, he turned. “Coming, Porter?”

  With tremendous effort the dog lifted his head, gave Teddy a look, groaned a little, then lay back down and began to snore again.

  “What about you, Bella?” he said, looking across to the mantel. “You work here, right? It’s your job to keep the customers company. You won’t let me go off and be lonely, will you?”

  The cat stared at him and didn’t move.

  “Ed?” he said, “what about you? You gonna leave a guy all by himself in a strange town where the ladies are cold and the beer is probably lukewarm?”

  Ed, who had begun to pace as well as shoot his free hand around in the air, was still talking animatedly into the phone.

  As Ed continued his conversation with Taylor, Teddy caught Ed’s flailing arm and guided him out of the room, pausing in the doorway to wink at Lily.

  “And close the door!” Lily called after him.

  When he didn’t, she got up and closed it herself.

  Chapter 2

  “Who was that, Taylor?” Michael asked as I hung up the phone.

  “Ed. He’s found the teacup of death.”

  Michael began to laugh. “I’d ask you to repeat that in case I got it wrong, but knowing Ed you actually did say teacup. Of death. And where is this terrifying object?”

  “Key West. He wants me to come running and feel around for vibes or something.” I said it with the irony it deserved. “He says Teddy bought out a B&B for the week, and there’s an extra room. Fate, he called it. As if some divine power knew that another person would be needed. And needless to say, that person is me. It was written in the stars, apparently. Do you believe that guy?”

  “Key West?” he said, no longer laughing.

  “Oh, no,” I said, pointing a finger at him and staring him down. “We are not going on some wild goose chase after killer teacups.”

  “We haven’t had a vacation together in a long time,” he said quietly. “After all, it’s only a five or six hour drive from here.”

  “The last time I went, it took eight solid hours to get there from Tropical Breeze. And,” I said, touching the back of my hand to my forehead, “I was young then. When I got out of the car, I could walk. Upright. Without limping. You know how my back has been bothering me lately.”

  “Really? You never mentioned it.”

  “I’m not a whiner. It’s right down here, in the small of my back, right about hip level . . . .”

  “We could break up the drive by spending the night in Key Largo. I’ve always thought it looks interesting, but I’ve always been on my way to Key West and only stopped for gas and a quick lunch. Heck, we could leave tonight. I bet we could get a room somewhere on the way down without a reservation. Hotels in the upper and middle Keys really need the business, after the hurricane last year; they’re still trying to clean up and get back on their feet. We wouldn’t need to pack much. You could tell me all about the teacup of death along the way.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. Everybody who brings the teacup home dies right away. Except the guy who owns the antique shop it’s in now, apparently. He’s afraid of the darn thing, but he keeps ending up with it. End of story.”

  “So they’re going to do a show on it?”

  “Maybe. Teddy wants something more macho, like an axe.”

  “He would. I’d pay good money to see that – Teddy the manly ghost-avenger, trying to look like he’s afraid of a teacup.”

  “With little purple flowers.” When Michael looked askance, I said, “The cup’s got little purple flowers painted on it. Lilacs. That would be worth a laugh, watching Teddy try to whip up a horror story with a little teacup in his hand, pinkie finger in the air. Knowing Teddy, he can do it, though.”

  Michael was watching me, eyes bright and hopeful.

  I got a sinking feeling. Michael was so good to me, and a few years before I’d made him go off on a lawyers’ association cruise by himself because I didn’t feel I could afford it, and we hadn�
��t been together long enough for me to let him pay my way. And to be honest, I hadn’t wanted to go – I’m needed at Orphans of the Storm, my shelter. Since then, our relationship had become stronger and I didn’t feel I could keep sending him off on his own. He didn’t want to travel without me, so he just didn’t go anywhere. That wasn’t fair, and I knew it.

  After all, it was only Key West. We wouldn’t even have to leave the state. It wasn’t like he was asking me to go to Europe or Australia.

  I could see him watching me, keeping silent because he knew that all the arguments he could be making were already running through my mind. I’m like that. Nobody has to try to make me feel guilty. I can do it all by myself.

  After a few minutes of silent back-and-forth between us within the confines of my own head, I finally gave in.

  “All right!” I said. “Stop looking at me like that. But I have to round up some volunteers – I can’t just go running off – and I have to make up a schedule, and I’ll need to make sure everybody knows how to contact me in an emergency – ”

  “They already do.”

  “And I have to think this through. Get it straight in my mind. And who goes to Key West in February? The rates are through the roof.”

  “Didn’t you say they already had a room for you at the B&B? Once we get there, it won’t cost us a cent, unless we go overboard on tee shirts with parrots on them.”

  I paused, hoping for mercy. “Oh, Michael, do we have to?”

  “Of course not. You know I won’t complain if we don’t go. I’ll never bring it up again. No hard feelings.”

  I stared at him for a full minute. Then I closed my eyes and lowered my head, murmuring, “I can’t believe you’re making me do this. Oh, all right. I’ll go pack.”

  When I felt his arms go around me, I put my head against his neck and said, “Three days. That’s it. We drive down in one day, deal with this fershnickin’ teacup, then drive right back. Three days, no more.”

  “Five,” he said.

  I growled at his neck. “Okay, five. Five days is my absolute outside limit for dealing with possessed teacups. If I can’t get the demon out of it by then, it’s just going to have to go on murdering people.”

  * * * * *

  Ed had called on Saturday night, and thinking it over, we made a quick decision to leave early the next morning. Trying to get past Miami was going to be a lot easier on a Sunday. Not to say easy. Just easier. And if Ed was providing five or six days’ worth of free lodging at a B&B, I decided we should take advantage of as much of it as we could. Once I’d jumped the mental barrier of deciding to go at all, I agreed that after a nine hour drive, we might as well stay a while.

  As I packed, my cat, Bastet had sat on the bed and watched me with her usual bland indifference. Somehow she was able to watch me steadily without really seeming to see me at all, or care about what I was doing. Her green eyes are exactly the same color as mine, and as she stared at me unblinkingly, I began to feel uneasy. After a while, I started shooting glances at her, trying to forget that she was there and feeling her presence grow bigger and bigger as she lay there quietly, doing nothing. The odd angle she had chosen to arrange herself made the light of my bedside lamp shine directly into her eyes, making them glow.

  Finally I stopped what I was doing and stared back at her.

  “What?” I said.

  Nothing but silence and a steady green gaze.

  “You’re not coming,” I told her. “It’s an all-day drive, and at the end of it will be a chintz-covered B&B with a sweet-little-old-lady of an innkeeper who will be cooing baby-talk at you all day long. You’ll hate it. Seriously. And there are roosters all over the place in Key West. They wake you up at 4 am, which is just about the time everybody else in town is going to bed – and not quietly. The tail-end of the pub crawl always means having to scream with joy in the streets, for some reason.”

  “At least they’re happy drunks,” Michael said, coming into the room and draping himself around Bastet. He wove his fingers through her thick black fur, then lay there massaging her neck. Finally, she closed her eyes and stopped staring at me. In a moment, she was purring.

  Lowering my voice, I told him, “She’s not coming.”

  “I already talked to Myrtle and Carlene about her,” he said. “She’ll be fine here. They all treat her like she’s a goddess; they’ll spoil her rotten. You know that.”

  I stood quietly staring at them for a moment, not really knowing what I wanted. I realized I was going to miss her. She’s quiet and aloof and seems to like Michael a lot more than she does me, but she’s my cat, and she’s a presence. She’s there. When your pet’s not around, a piece of the puzzle is missing, the picture’s just not complete. She never makes any noise, but when she’s not around, everything is too quiet.

  “Don’t worry,” Michael said, looking at the cat but talking to me. “You’ll be so busy just trying to keep Ed calm you won’t even have time to think about home until we walk back in the front door.”

  “Well, I guess you’re right. I don’t travel enough to be blasé about it, and I never know what clothes to bring. What are the temperatures like in Key West this time of the year?”

  “Light jacket weather in the morning, warm-to-hot in the afternoon, back to jackets in the evenings. You can get away with tee shirts and capris if you like. Sandals.”

  I turned back to the closet and began trying to match tops to bottoms, earrings to tops, bracelets to earrings and purses to everything. It’s a cardinal rule among women that you don’t change purses immediately before a trip, because you always leave something important in the previous purse, but I hadn’t known that I’d be traveling at all. The one I’d been using simply wouldn’t work, so I changed over very, very carefully.

  What else? Good walking sandals, an extra pair just in case, jacket, sunhat, make-up, hair stuff, e-reader, chargers, tablet, and still I was pretty sure I was forgetting something.

  Ninety minutes later, while I sat down with my e-reader to make sure I had enough vacation-type books downloaded (B&B wi-fi being what it is), Michael got up off the bed and packed in five minutes flat.

  Chapter 3

  We took my car, a comfortable SUV. Michael had a tiny Jaguar-kinda thing, a 2-seater with a trunk the size of my glove compartment and little kiddie seats that were about six inches off the ground. Nine hours of that and they’d have to take me straight to the hospital.

  We got past Miami with only two near misses from lane-changers and just one ambulance screaming by, followed by the Fire Chief, the hook-and-ladder, cop cars – the usual. So Miami was relatively calm. Past Homestead, we went straight ahead onto the single highway that takes you all the way through the Keys – at least the ones connected to civilization by road. On both sides of the highway were other islands with who-knows-what going on on them, but I doubt that they’re all uninhabited.

  Mangroves sprouted out of the water everywhere, getting a toehold under the surface and pulling together with other trees until they had a bump in the waves, then a patch of sand, and eventually, after lazy eons, an island. We could see every stage of island-building going on out there under the wide, wide waters. They spread out to our right and left, the ocean and the gulf, purple in the deeps and milky green in the shallows, silver under the clouds, as patched as a crazy quilt.

  By the time we reached Key Largo and stopped for lunch, I was getting hypnotized, not even wanting to talk much. And after Largo, the wreckage left behind by Hurricane Irma kept me even quieter. Debris was still piled up along the highway like haystacks five months after the storm. Skeletal recreational vehicles lay dead beside the road, and boats floated hulls-up in the water, when they weren’t piled together in junk yards.

  “What are they going to do with all this stuff?” I asked as we passed a particularly sad pile of boats.

  “Artificial reef?” Michael suggested. “They’re not ever going to be seaworthy again, that’s for sure. I don’t think you could e
ven salvage them for parts.” He was driving, and after steadying his eyes back on the road, he made a clumsy stab at changing the subject. “So . . . what’s the story on this teacup?”

  “Oh, yeah, that thing. Well, Ed got a call from this guy who owns an estate liquidation business. Ed said the place is packed with everything from larger-than-life sculpture to complete suites of furniture to collectibles and antiques. It’s right on Duval Street, the main drag, so it must pay well; rents on Duval can’t be cheap. And in the middle of all the overstuffed furniture and questionable art, a little china teacup is sending out shockwaves of terror. At least, Ed is terrified. As usual.”

  Michael’s head lifted a fraction of an inch and he pursed his lips. “Ed’s a skeptic, right? He doesn’t let himself get hopeful until he does a few tests and begins to think something is really there. He’s always quivering with anticipation about something, but I don’t think he’s often terrified.”

  “Well, the owner of the emporium is, and maybe it was catching. Oswald Grist, the guy’s name is. Conjures up a picture, doesn’t it? Something gnomish and persnickety.”

  “Only found in Dickens or Key West,” he added with a grin. “And why is Oswald terrified?”

  “Well, it seems in order to keep his inventory stocked, he doesn’t just wait around for people to come to him with stuff they don’t want anymore, he goes to estate sales and bids on entire rooms. He doesn’t even know what-all’s in the lot sometimes, until he unpacks it back at the emporium. And he noticed that this little teacup kept coming back to him. Two or three estate sales in a row, there was the teacup. He knew ahead of time that the estate belonged to somebody who had shopped at his store, of course, because he sold the cup to them in the first place, when they’d still been . . . you know, alive. But he was intrigued at the fact that none of the dearly departed’s relatives wanted to keep that particular memento; apparently, it’s a very pretty thing, and perfect to remember Auntie Whatzername by, but nobody wanted it. So back to the shop it went, and the next one to buy it promptly dropped dead, and so on and so forth.”