Shadow of a Spout by Amanda Cooper

thudded and she clutched at her chest, the pang fearfully like angina. “It’s Zunia,” she said, her voice weak with horror. “There’s blood. I think she’s dead!”
    Laverne made a pathway for them to the front and tugged Rose after her as the alarm mercifully stopped. Penelope Daley, gowned in a frilly pink nightie, stood, eyes wide, huffing and puffing and staring down at the floor. Zunia Pettigrew lay by the elevator with her legs crumpled beneath her. She was indeed bloody, streaks over her face and matting her dark hair, eyes wide and staring straight up at the ceiling, a puzzled expression forever etched on her face. She was dressed as they had seen her the day before, in a skirt suit. Lying on the carpeted floor beside her crushed, bloodied head was Rose’s antique teapot, one side completely dinged in, and a dark patch stained the carpet.
    Penelope Daley finally found her voice and cried, the words echoing in the hallway, “That’s your teapot!” as she pointed at Rose.
    The crowd parted and some of the teapot collectors pulled back, staring at Rose in consternation. Whispering started. “Rose Freemont . . . She had an argument with Zunia . . . I heard she’s dangerous!”
    *   *   *
    T hunder rolled and crashed, the hotel convention room lighting up even through drawn curtains. Police had responded swiftly to the 911 call, and two deputies had first hustled them all to a sitting area at the far end of the hall, one staying with them to be sure no one talked about what they had seen. But soon after their arrival the Butterhill police detectives had herded them down the stairs, which was a slow process with the number of seniors in the group. In the convention meeting room the police had established an organized hub: a U shape of tables and a few chairs, extension cords snaking across the floor for laptops and a printer and a separate interview area that consisted of a long table with two chairs on one side, and four on the other. Everyone with a room on the second floor—and that meant all of the teapot collectors who were staying at the inn, except for Horace and Malcolm—was sitting with the others facing the police hub.
    Josh stood alone, watching everything. He didn’t appear alarmed, just interested. SuLinn was yawning and checking her watch. She had her phone with her, but the police had told her to refrain from using it. Rose and Laverne sat on hard wooden chairs along one wall holding hands, still in their nightgowns and housecoats, getting chilly from the air-conditioning that now seemed to be working perfectly, unlike the afternoon before. Any time they tried to talk an eagle-eyed deputy—she was young, but her pale blue eyes looked steely and humorless to Rose—moved closer and asked them to please not discuss what they had witnessed.
    But the girl couldn’t stop Rose from thinking. As Penelope had pointed out, it was Rose’s teapot beside Zunia’s lifeless body, and it had, if she was not mistaken, a smear of blood on it. How was that possible? When did she last see the teapot? She knew she’d have to explain all that to the police, so she frowned down at her hand joined with her best friend’s and thought it over. Laverne squeezed her hand every once in a while and they exchanged looks. Rose knew she was thinking, too.
    The teapot—before she went down to dinner she had stuffed it in one of her bags, the blue tapestry one with the soft sides. It was a reminder of an unpleasant encounter that she still wasn’t sure she had handled correctly. On the one hand, in her life she had learned not to be a pushover. But on the other, she knew that bold-faced contradiction often served the opposite side in a confrontation. It had made her look angry and insulting, which was far from her real personality.
    And now Zunia was dead, presumably killed with Rose’s teapot. How did the antique get out of her bag and become the murder weapon used against Zunia Pettigrew? Try as she