Tempest in a Teapot (A Teapot Collector Mystery) Read Free Page A

from grocery stores. She’s always claimed that Vivienne, Francis’s mother, was born in a hootchy-kootchy traveling show, back in the fifties. I guess that’s why she’s so dead set against Cissy marrying Francis.” Her forehead wrinkled. “I
guess
that’s what it is.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t know, honey. I’ve been listening to Laverne too much; you know how she likes to gossip.”
    “If something is worrying you, tell me.”
    Nana scrunched up her face. “Laverne has some idea that there’s trouble at the company Francis works for, Leathorne and Hedges Architecture. Her niece works there, and she’s heard rumblings.”
    “Nothing really to do with him, is it?”
    “True . . . not worth talking about. Gossip is mostly fancy and frills put on speculation.”
    Sophie watched her grandmother’s face, but she wasn’t saying anything else. “Let’s go down to the tearoom and discuss this. If you want me to do Cissy’s shower, I can try.” Her stomach twisted. It was silly; she had managed
and
been the executive chef of an eighty-seat restaurant in the trendy garment district of New York, the youngest to do both jobs, she had been told. Surely she could do a little bridal show presentation and talk about teapots for twenty minutes. So why was she so uptight about it?
    Maybe because she had failed so miserably in her last job.
    • • •
    L averne Hodge was already setting up the tearoom for the expected afternoon guests. Auntie Rose’s Victorian Tea House was a forty-year tradition in Gracious Grove, popular long before the rage for tearooms peaked as baby boomers aged. Part of Auntie Rose’s popularity could be explained by Gracious Grove being a “dry” town, conducive to civilized discourse over tea and scones, rather than boozy confessions over whiskey and peanuts. But mostly it was because Rose and Laverne excelled at providing the true tearoom experience, with refreshing tea, soothing decor and good food.
    Sophie remembered Nana’s favorite joke . . . guests came for the tea and stayed for the experience, but spent their money on the pretty doodads! The Tea Nook, a small room off the tearoom proper, was responsible for much of the profit, and so was carefully tended. Fresh offerings of tea-scented candles, teacups, complete tea sets both for children and adults, packaged tea—including a blend called Auntie Rose’s Tea-riffic Tea—books on tea with bookmarks, and “tea-shirts,” which were T-shirts with teacups and teapots emblazoned on them, were added weekly.
    The tearoom itself was pretty, if a little too frilly for Sophie’s taste. White wainscoting lined the main room, with rose-toile-papered walls above. Antique sideboards and buffet hutches filled with teapots in various themes lined the walls. An ornate Eastlake buffet held floral teapots, while a heavy Victorian held chintz designs. On floating shelves in between there were animal shapes, people, royal family tributes, Red Hat Society teapots and too many more to name.
    Scattered around the room—it used to be a living room and dining room, but a wall had been removed and supporting pillars had been added to make space for the tearoom—were white-linen-covered tables with comfortable chairs, about eleven tables in all, enough space to seat forty-four guests or so. Nana threaded through the chairs and tables, straightening as she went, toward the cash desk at the front. Sophie followed, tentatively, realizing why she had avoided the tearoom for three days: She was afraid of the responsibility her grandmother seemed eager to foist upon her.
    Was that what she had been left with since her restaurant went belly-up, this crippling lack of confidence? It hadn’t really occurred to her why she had been floating along, listless and directionless, but fear explained a lot, even why she let her mother cajole her into the awful date with Dr. Sebastian-the-Repulsive. A part of her had bought into her mom’s belief