A Twist In The Tail

Three

‘Murder? Why, I can’t believe it!’ Millie said after Seth had given us the bad news. Mom, Millie and I had adjourned to the parlor and were settling into the overstuffed chairs arranged around a low marble-topped table as a private seating area.

Barbara had rushed off, probably to file a complaint against me. Or maybe she was poring over the town statutes to see what kind of fine one can dole out when a person has a guest murdered in her guesthouse. Tina had taken the news of the murder very hard and the Weatherbys had taken her upstairs with Ava, after stopping in the dining room for a snack.

‘It’s awful.’ My mother looked at me. ‘Who do you think would have wanted him dead?

‘He’s been staying here a few days. Did you notice him arguing with anyone?’ Millie asked.

Just me. ‘Not really. He kept to himself mostly.’

‘Hmm… what about the other guests, have they been acting suspiciously?’

Had they? I had been too busy trying not to burn breakfast and dealing with Barbara Littlefield to notice. ‘I don’t think so. Quite frankly I’ve had my hands full. And now this, and who knows what kind of a punishment Barbara is cooking up. Do you think she can have the guesthouse shut down?’

‘Why would she do that?’ Millie asked.

‘I don’t know, it seems like she has it in for me. I try to do everything to the codes and still she persists on finding things wrong.’

‘Well, she is very strict about the building codes dear, but it’s for a good reason. I’m sure she doesn’t have anything against you personally.’ My mother patted my arm. ‘It’s all for the good of the town. She wants to maintain the quaint atmosphere.’

Millie nodded. ‘She can be a stickler, but she’s protecting us. I mean, look at the good she did with those lousewort plants.’

‘She was instrumental in putting a stop to that big hotel on the cliff – what do you think would’ve happened to the guesthouse if that had been built?’ My mother glanced out the window in the direction of the shore.

I had to give Barbara that. Last summer, she’d discovered growing up on the cliffs a plant, very rare in Maine, called Furbish’s Lousewort. She formed a committee and petitioned the state to declare the area where it grew protected, and in the nick of time. Some big conglomerate had been finalizing plans to build a huge hotel up there.

‘But why be so hard on the guesthouse? It’s one of the oldest buildings in town and I fully intend to renovate it in keeping with the way it was back in the day.’

‘You left town, so you’re sort of an outsider in Barbara’s eyes. She doesn’t trust you yet. Give her time.’ The cats came in and trotted over to Millie without even giving me a glance. Guess they forgot who their owner was now. I had to admit I was a little bit jealous of the way they settled in on Millie’s lap.

‘I guess the cats prefer their old owner,’ I said, earning a cold glare from Nero.

‘Owner?’ Millie was aghast. ‘Cats don’t have owners, dear, it’s the other way around. The sooner you realize that, the better your relationship with them will be.’

Nero shot me a smug look and then curled up and went to sleep.

‘I have to say, though, I don’t know what this town is coming to,’ my mother said. ‘First dead gulls then dead people.’

‘Now Rose. Don’t you worry,’ Millie said. ‘Why there’s been hardly any problems here in town for decades. We’re due and now that we’ve had these two pieces of bad luck it’ll be smooth sailing from here on out.’

I hoped Millie was right. I had invested everything I had into the purchase of the guesthouse and was counting on it being filled with guests for the summer season. The dead seagulls weren’t a problem for me though. Gulls generally stayed away from the guesthouse, possibly because of the cats. If that were the case, I’d have to thank them. Seagulls could be annoying pests and I didn’t want them swooping around and driving away business. While I didn’t wish harm on any of God’s creatures, I wasn’t going to cry about fewer gulls. Then again, having dead birds wash up on the beach, like they had been doing lately, wasn’t very attractive to tourists either.

There was a sound at the door and I turned to see Mike.

‘I thought I heard you, Auntie.’ Mike gave Millie a peck on the cheek then turned to my mother. ‘Rose, how are you?’

‘Just fine Michael. Tommy said to say hi to you by the way.’

Mike winked at me and rolled his eyes. My mom had been calling him Michael since childhood, no matter how many times he told her he preferred Mike. ‘How is Tommy doing?’

My mother rolled her eyes. ‘Good, except he seems to think Maine is too far to come for a visit.’

My brother Tommy had moved to Florida a few years ago and now claimed Maine was too cold for him and only came to visit twice a year. I personally thought maybe he didn't come often because Mom’s antics with the crime scenes and all were a bit much for him. Luckily, I was here to try to reign her in... not that that was working out very well.

Mike gave my mother a sympathetic look and turned to me. ‘Hey Sunshine, I heard about the police verdict that your guest was actually murdered. I was wondering if I could do anything to help?’

‘I don’t think I really need any help, do I?’

Mike shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but I’ll tell you one thing, I’m almost positive someone messed with those stairs.’

I frowned. ‘Why would someone do that?’

‘To mask the murder of course, dear,’ Millie said, as if I was some kind of a dunce.

My mother nodded. ‘Yes of course. They were probably hoping Sheriff Chamberlain would say that it was an accident.’

Huh, that was interesting. He almost did say it was an accident… and hadn’t Ron Weatherby mentioned that small town police forces usually didn’t have the capacity to investigate thoroughly? I hoped that wouldn’t be the case here, a murder was bad enough but an unsolved one was even worse.

‘What kind of tampering do you mean?’ I asked Mike. If someone had murdered Charles on purpose, then tried to stage it as an accident, they would’ve spent a bit of time in that room. But that section had been blocked off, the doors locked. I supposed anyone could have picked the lock, and the sounds of tools echoing through the guesthouse wasn’t uncommon since Mike was working on repairs.

‘The stairs were pretty rotten, but it looked like someone helped them along. The way the boards broke look like they were snapped in two as opposed to breaking from the pressure of someone standing on them. And, the nails had been pulled up.’

I wasn’t sure what to do with this information. Tell the police? Could they figure that out on their own? And what did Mike know about stairs anyway? Sure, he was doing carpentry work here, and he seemed to be doing a good job, but he’d been a Navy officer before. Carpentry was just a sideline.

I was just about to open my mouth to say as much when Flora bustled in, her white orthopedic shoes squeaking as she sashayed toward Mike.

Flora was a skinny elderly woman with gigantic round glasses that made her eyes owlish. When Millie had sold me the Oyster Cove Guesthouse, she’d said that Flora had been the maid for fifty years and depended on the money. I mean, who can live on social security? I assumed that meant she actually did some cleaning, and since I was from out of town and didn’t know of anyone else, I agreed to keep her on. The joke was on me. Since I’d been here she’d managed to wiggle out of every job I’d tasked her with. Naturally, I didn’t have to keep her on, but who could fire a little old lady with thirty-two grandchildren? I didn’t have the heart for it. Maybe someday when funds allowed I’d get another maid that actually worked.

‘Mr. Mike, are you done in the sand dollar room?’ Flora blinked up at him. It was a long ways up, too, since Flora was about four feet tall and Mike was over six.

Mike smiled down at her, turning on that boyish charm that I remembered from long ago. Apparently it wasn’t only reserved for young girls. Of course that kind of charm didn’t work on me anymore but it worked on Flora, who practically swooned. ‘I am. Did I leave too much of a mess in there?’

Flora shook her head. ‘Oh no. I’m happy to clean up anything you leave.’

My mouth practically fell open. Since when was Flora happy to clean?

Mike bent down and gave her a little kiss on her papery cheek. ‘Thanks. You let me know if it’s too much.’ He turned to me. ‘And you let me know if I can help out, Sunshine.’

We all watched him leave, Flora’s gaze on a specific part of his body clad in faded jeans. As soon as he cleared the door, Flora turned to me, a scowl on her face.

‘I hope you don’t have any ideas about me cleaning up that mess in the West wing. I do not do crime scenes.’

And with that she turned and left the room, brushing past Ava Grantham in the doorway.

‘I’ve just been upstairs and Tina is finally settled down. Young people these days, they can’t handle anything worth a monkey’s patootie. Good thing those Weatherbys have clear heads. Your sheriff is up in Prescott’s room. He’ll be interviewing all of us soon.’ She pulled a straight back chair over and plopped down in it. ‘Honestly, I’m not surprised someone murdered Prescott.’

‘You’re not?’ We asked in unison.

Ava shook her head. ‘Nope, not at all. He was a nasty man.’

My mother and Millie exchanged a glance.

‘You knew him?’ Millie asked.

‘Of course.’ Ava pointed to herself. ‘This old bird’s been around for a while. We worked together on a few newspapers.’

‘Charles worked in news? Was he a writer?’ I asked.

Ava gave me a funny look. ‘You don’t know who he was?’

I didn’t like the way that sounded. Was Charles someone I was supposed to know? Knowing someone who’d been murdered in my guesthouse might not be good for business… or my freedom.

‘No idea,’ I said.

‘Charles Prescott was the Laughing Gourmet. You know… the food critic and chef.’

Darn! I probably should have known who he was. Hadn’t Clay—my ex—mentioned his name before? The truth was, I really hadn’t paid much attention to what was going on with the ex’s chef job in the later years.

When we were first married I’d been very involved. Always eating at his restaurants and going out to events with him, but then Emma came along and we agreed my focus should be on taking care of her needs. I started paying less and less attention to what was going on with the ex, because his career was going well and he was working his way to the top of his field. Little did I know he was also working his way to the top of a succession of pretty female sous chefs.

‘I might have heard of him,’ I said.

‘Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t. Truth is, he’s not that popular anymore.’ She leaned forward. ‘His column is barely read nowadays. It got cancelled from the paper we both worked on last year. Heard he was hurting for money, too. Rumor has it he was writing some fancy pants cookbook full of innovative and unusual recipes that he thought would make him rich.’

Millie’s brows shot up to her hairline. She looked at my mom. ‘Money? That’s usually a motive for murder.’

Mom opened her mouth, but before she could reply, footsteps pounded down the front stairs. Seth Chamberlain appeared in the doorway holding a plastic bag in his hand. Inside the bag was what looked like a small piece of paper.

‘What’s that?’ Millie asked.

‘We found this in the victim’s room. Looks like he was writing some sort of a note. And since we discovered that he is a food and hotel critic, it isn’t a big jump to assume the note was about the Oyster Cove Guesthouse.’ Seth held the corner of an envelope up. We could see it was part of a note, a few words scrawled on the edge. No, not exactly words, just parts of words. I could make out ‘ull’ and ‘ick’ and ‘son.’

Millie craned her neck forward and squinted. ‘That doesn’t look like a review to me.’

Seth turned the bag back to face him. ‘Of course it’s not the whole review. But anyone can put together that he was writing something about the inn being ‘dull’ and the food ‘icky.’ The killer clearly took the rest of it because they didn’t want anyone to find it.’ His eyes drilled into mine. ‘And who wouldn’t want someone to find a bad review about the Oyster Cove Guesthouse?’

‘Lots of people,’ Mom chimed in.

‘I didn’t even know who he was until Ava mentioned it just now,’ I said.

Seth made a face. ‘You expect me to believe that? Your husband is a famous chef, surely you’d have heard of the Laughing Gourmet.’

My expression turned sheepish. ‘I never really paying that much attention to what my husband said.’

Seth didn’t look like he believed me. I had visions of him whipping out handcuffs and hauling me off to jail. Millie must have had the same vision because she stood and went to Seth’s side, possibly to distract him.

‘Josie wouldn’t kill anybody over a review. That’s ridiculous.’ Millie patted his arm.

‘People have killed for less, Millie. You’re too nice.’ Seth beamed at her.

‘Be that as it may, I have known Josie since she was in diapers and she is no killer.’

Seth frowned and swiveled his gaze back to me. ‘What about that time she was caught trying to sneak out of the bowling alley with the rental shoes still on?’

Millie waved her hand dismissively ‘Teenage hijinks. Besides, stealing shoes can hardly be compared to killing someone. I hope you’re not getting any ideas about arresting Josie. That would be foolish. You have no concrete proof. This isn’t even a letter, just some partial words. You wouldn’t want to arrest the wrong person, would you?’

Seth considered that for a second, then said, ‘Maybe arresting the wrong person is better than arresting no person. We haven’t had a murder in this town in more than a hundred years and I think the townsfolk will be nervous and want to know that the police are doing something.’

‘A false arrest will not gain their confidence and it will also ensure that I don’t bake you any more of my blueberry pies.’ Millie let go of his arm and stomped back to her chair.

Seth’s face fell. ‘Okay, fine. But if I get any more evidence that points to you, Miss Josie Waters, you won’t have to worry anymore about what to serve for breakfast to your guests. You’ll be getting served breakfast yourself. Too bad it will be bread and water at the Oyster Cove jail!’

That wasn’t true. I happened to know they served eggs for breakfast there, but I was scared anyway.

Seth left and I exhaled. ‘Really? He was going to arrest me because of some partial words on a piece of paper? That’s ridiculous,’ I said. Was it possible that Charles was writing a bad review about the guesthouse? He’d been mad about the egg, but surely that wasn’t enough to write a bad review? Even if it was, why would someone else kill him over it?

‘Of course it is dear,’ Mom assured me.

‘We know you’re no killer. But unfortunately Seth doesn’t have much experience in murder cases. He’ll want this wrapped up as soon as possible. There’s only one thing for us to do.’

‘That’s right.’ Mom pushed up from her chair and headed for the door. ‘We need to figure out who the killer is before Seth tries to arrest Josie again. The best place to start is the victim’s room.’