Tempest in a Teapot (A Teapot Collector Mystery) by Amanda Cooper Page B

here all summer, I’m going to have to get an air conditioner.”
    She set the cat aside on the other chair and roamed, opening all the windows, trying to get a cross breeze going in the attic apartment. She stood looking out the dormer that overlooked Belle Époque. The tearoom windows were open and she could hear Thelma’s stentorian voice as she held forth at length. Nana had told her all about how the woman had tried to re-create the Auntie Rose experience, the tea talk, the showers and Red Hat Society luncheons, though nothing quite worked.
    For one thing, Thelma Mae Earnshaw was just not a good cook, nor was Gilda, her employee. They used frozen food, popped into the oven and overbaked. If Thelma spent half as much time on being original and using fresh ingredients rather than copying Auntie Rose while skimping on the food, Nana said, she might get somewhere. Instead, she had spent the last few years on dirty tricks—waylaying packages meant for Auntie Rose’s, starting rumors about the food used at the tearoom, even going so far as inserting an ad in the local paper saying Auntie Rose’s was closing for renovations—but nothing had dulled her nana’s popularity.
    Pearl rubbed against her ankle. Just as she bent over to pick up the cat, Sophie heard a loud scream, and a ruckus broke out in Belle Époque—shouts and a woman’s wailing voice. Sophie put Pearl down and raced for the stairs, clattering down the two flights and out the side door and over to the inn next door. It was like déjà vu from the other day with Phil’s busted liquor bottles. She raced in the front door and saw a ring of women, some weeping, all looking down at someone or something. “What’s going on?”
    Five faces turned to regard her, then turned back to the matter at hand, which, Sophie saw, as she pushed through, was Vivienne Whittaker on the floor. She looked a ghastly yellowish color, but Sophie realized in a flash that that was just the frosting smeared on her face. Her eyes were wide and she was making an eerie sound, like air being let out of tires.
    The moment froze in time and Sophie saw Gilda Bachman, Thelma’s underpaid assistant, with the phone in her hand. She was babbling about a sick woman, while Thelma fell back on a chair, hand clutched over her heart. Francis was on his knees by his mother, yelling in her face, asking what was wrong, cake crumbs grinding into his trousers. Cissy clutched at Francis’s suit jacket sleeve, the fabric bunching in her fingers. Others clustered in a group, watching, horrified, but she couldn’t manage individual faces, just a blur of female figures.
    “Is she choking?” Sophie cried, bending over them. “Can anyone do the Heimlich? Or . . . or is she having a heart attack?”
    Cissy screamed, “Do
something
, Francis!”
    A heavyset, handsome woman was standing nearby moaning, hand over her mouth, her heavily mascaraed eyes wide. She slumped down into a chair and covered her face with her hands. The wail of sirens in the background alerted them that the ambulance was on its way, and Sophie ran to the door just as it screeched into the parking lot. “This way!” she shouted, as it pulled to a halt.
    Two paramedics jumped out and opened the back doors, working together to get a heavy case out. A police car screamed to a halt, too, and Wally Bowman threw himself out of the car and hustled to the door. “Sophie, I heard you were back. What’s going on?” Paramedics pushed past them carrying their emergency kits.
    “I don’t know, exactly,” Sophie said. “I was in my apartment and heard a scream. When I came over, I saw Vivienne Whittaker on the floor, sick or choking or having a heart attack . . . or something!”
    Wally strode in and Sophie followed, hanging back but still able to see, since the paramedics had cleared the way. They knelt by Vivienne, whose eyes were now closed, her face red. The convulsions had stopped; Sophie couldn’t decide if that was a good thing