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just two shakes, and then I’ll be back with tea and some complimentary biscuits.”
    And the rest of the day was off and running at the Indigo Tea Shop.
    â€œI’ll be back on Wednesday, dear.” Miss Dimple put a plump hand on Theodosia’s arm.
    â€œThank you, Miss Dimple. I’m so glad you’ve been able to help out here at the tea shop. Now that Bethany’s got a job at the museum in Columbia, we’ve been woefully shorthanded.”
    â€œIt’s you who deserves the thanks,” said Miss Dimple. “Not everyone would take a chance on a creaky old bookkeeper. Seems like the trend these days is to hire young.”
    â€œTrends don’t concern us here at the tea shop,” said Theodosia warmly. “People do.”
    â€œBless you, dear,” said Miss Dimple. And she toddled out the door, a barely five-foot-tall, plump little elf of a woman who was still sharp as a tack when it came to tabulating a column of numbers.

CHAPTER 4

    â€œ THEODOSIA.” DRAYTON HAD a teapot filled with jasmine tea in one hand and a teapot of Ceylon silver tips in the other. “As soon as we get our customers taken care of, I need to speak with you.”
    Theodosia glanced out over the tables. Their customers had already settled in and were munching benne wafers and casting admiring glances at the shelves that held cozy displays of tea tins, jellies, china teapots, and tea candles.
    â€œWhat’s up?” she asked.
    He cocked his head to one side and gave a conspiratorial roll of his eyes. “The mystery tea,” he told her in a quavering, theatrical voice.
    Theodosia grinned. Drayton was certainly in his element planning all his special-event teas. But this mystery tea had really seemed to capture his imagination. It would appear that Drayton, the straitlaced history buff and Heritage Society parliamentarian, had a playful side, after all.
    Anyway, Theodosia decided, Drayton certainly had an astute business side. His mystery tea was already shaping up as a success. Counting the two calls they’d received earlier this morning, they now had twelve confirmed reservations for Saturday night. And Drayton had audaciously put a price of forty-five dollars per person on the event.
    â€œOkay, Drayton,” she said, “I’ll be in my office.”
    Theodosia disappeared behind the panels of heavy green velvet that separated the tea shop from the back area, where the tiny kitchen and her even tinier office were located.
    Â 
    Sitting at her antique wooden desk, thumbing through a catalog from Woods & Winston, one of her suppliers, Theodosia had a hard time keeping her mind on carafes and French tea presses. Her thoughts kept returning to yesterday afternoon, to Oliver Dixon’s demise and to her subsequent conversation with Burt Tidwell.
    She had taunted Tidwell a bit with her crack about rival yacht clubs. She’d been testing him, trying to ascertain what his suspicions had been, for she knew for a fact that, Burt Tidwell being Burt Tidwell, he’d certainly harbor a few thoughts of his own.
    But had she really thought that members from one yacht club would plot against another? No, not really. She knew the Charleston Yacht Club and the Compass Key Yacht Club competed against each other all the time. And relations had always been friendly between the clubs. Besides the Isle of Palms race, they also ran the Intercoastal Regatta and some kind of event in fall that was curiously dubbed the Bourbon Cup.
    What she was interested in knowing more about was Oliver Dixon and his new start-up company, Grapevine.
    Then there was the obviously intoxicated Ford Cantrell, who had staged a somewhat ugly scene in front of Oliver Dixon and Giovanni Loard. What had that been about?
    Haley had mentioned something earlier about her looking for a mystery to solve. Perhaps she had found her mystery.
    â€œKnock, knock,” announced Drayton as he pushed his way into her